LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

WpfjLl. eojnjrigljt Ifa 

' Shelf-^&- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



NEW GENERATION 






EDWIN A. SCHELL. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

REV. CHAS. C. McCABE, D. D. 






v 0CT 23 1393 

CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & CURTS. 
NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON. 

1393- 






*° 







Copyright by 

CRANSTON & CURTS, 

1803. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Introduction, 5 

I. Thor and his Hammer, 9 

II. Intercommunication, 33 

in. The Press, 47 

IV. Democracy, 63 

V. The Engush Language, 79 

VI. Emigration to America, 99 

VII. The Opening oe China, 117 

VIII. The Opening oe Japan, 131 

IX. The Civilization of Africa, 151 

X. Missions, 167 

XI. Method and Agents, 197 



INTRODUCTION. 



\ I /HAT the Tenth Legion was to the con- 
* * quering army of Julius Caesar ; what 
the Imperial Guard was to Napoleon the 
First — the Epworth League is to the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church. It is an aggrega- 
tion of piety, zeal, enthusiasm, and conse- 
cration, such as Methodism never saw before. 
Eight hundred thousand of the very chiv- 
alry of the Church are banded together in 
a blessed conspiracy to save the world. 

Such an organization means discipline, 
and discipline transforms mobs into con- 
quering legions. Discipline made it pos- 
sible for Havelock to lead his little army 
fifteen hundred miles, to Lucknow's relief, 
through a hundred millions of enemies. 
The day it becomes a fact that these eight 
hundred thousand young men and women 
fling themselves into this conflict with the 
glorious abandon of apostolic times, we 
shall see events that will make all men be- 
lieve the millennium a possibility, and 

5 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

therefore a certainty. Give us but this full 
measure of consecrated effort and united 
prayer, and a million converts in a single 
year will become a common experience to 
our beloved Church. 

Epworth Leaguers, we are most fortunate 
in the land of our birth and the field for our 
work. This is God's great missionary Na- 
tion. Our first duty is to our own country. 
To allow Protestant Christianity to lose its 
grip upon this Republic would be to insure 
defeat in all coming time. 

Josiah Strong puts before us the possi- 
bilities of the future. He says, in the 
"New Era:" 

" Imagine all the races of Europe trans- 
formed into one blood, their Babel of sixty 
tongues hushed, and the custom-houses of 
a score of frontiers closed. Imagine these 
many lands occupied by 380,000,000 Anglo- 
Saxons, speaking one language, having 
common institutions and interests, and all 
under one Government. The mightiest 
empire that ever existed would be but a 
faint suggestion of the resistless power of 
such a people. But this is only a picture 
of what the United States will be one cen- 
tury hence. All Europe, including the 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

vast plains of Russia, may be laid down 
within our national bounds, and, by a con- 
servative estimate, we shall have a popula- 
tion of 373,000,000 in 1990." 

What resistless power! What colossal 
wealth ! All to be used in the interest of 
the kingdom of heaven, if we can inter- 
penetrate these masses with the spirit of 
the gospel of Jesus ! 

We must not, however, wait to save our 
country before we do our full share toward 
the evangelization of the world. 

Out of one hundred and thirty-nine Mis- 
sionary Societies, one hundred and twenty- 
one are supported by the Anglo-Saxon 
race, and your own Missionary Society — in 
glorious achievements, in* pentecostal re- 
vivals, in the amount of its income — stands 
very near the front. 

Let us aspire to the leadership of all 
Protestant Christianity! It is a worthy 
ambition, because the eyes of the King are 
upon us, and he expects us to do our best. 
It is a proper ambition, because we have 
the conquering theology, which is so self-evi- 
dent and reasonable that even the heathen 
seem to need but a clear statement of it to 
accept it and believe it as the truth of God. 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

One-third of all the converts in heathen 
lands, says Dr. Abel Stevens, belong to 
some branch of the Methodist household. 
It would indeed be a glorious day when 
every Epworth Leaguer should accept it 
as part of his duty to give or raise five 
dollars for missions every year, and swing 
our income up to four millions of dollars 
annually. Do this, and then rejoice to see 
the "dark places of the earth," now the 
" habitations of cruelty," suddenly lit up 
with the glory of the Lord. 

Secretary Schell, in this volume, has 
sought to lay upon your hearts and con- 
sciences the mighty motives for united and 
unceasing activity. Listen to his appeals. 
Let the "new generation" prove itself 
worthy to inherit the past and to create 
the future. Then we shall see such an up- 
rising for the world's redemption from the 
sin and sorrow under which it groans 
as shall overwhelm all pessimistic phi- 
losophy and teaching with utter confusion, 
and give to the Lord's Prayer for the com- 
ing of his kingdom a new meaning in the 
hearts and hopes of mankind. 

C. C. McCABE. 



I. 

Thor and his Hammer. 



" The older order changeth, yielding place to new ; 
And God fulfills himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the earth." 

— TENNYSON. 

" But heard are the voices, 
Heard are the sages, 
The world, and the ages. 
Choose well ; your choice is 
Brief, and yet endless. 

Here eyes do regard you 

In eternity's stillness; 

Here is all fullness, 
Ye brave, to reward you ; 

Work, and despair not." 

— GOETHE. 

" Come, Spirit, make thy wonders known, 
Fulfill the Father's high decree; 
Then earth, the might of hell o'erthrown, 
Shall keep her last great jubilee." 

— PAEMER. 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 

THIS is the fourth generation in 
the Constitutional history of our 
country. 

The first is represented by that gal- 
axy of heroes who crowd the epic period 
of the Revolution. In those early days 
great Constitutions and immortal Dec- 
larations were burning in the hearts of 
the patriot fathers, and they kindled the 
fires at liberty's altar, never since ex- 
tinguished. At that altar great souls, 
like Lafayette, Kosciusko, and Bolivar, 
lighted the beacon torches which they 
bore in triumph about the earth. There 
stand grouped together in imperishable 
honor, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, 
and the elder Adams. 

The second is the generation of com- 
promise. It was the period when men 
trembled at the word disunion; when 

legislation, and even religion, were con- 

ii 



12 THE NEW GENERATION. 

ciliatoiy. The Missouri Compromise 
and the Omnibus Bill are typical acts 
of the legislation of that period. It is 
there we place the giant figures of Ben- 
ton, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. 

Then follows the war generation. 
They fronted each other like heroes in 
the Wilderness and on the slopes of 
Cemetery Ridge. Many of them, at 
" freedom's trumpet call," fell down in 
the cold embrace of death, and are sleep- 
ing to-day under the willows of Arling- 
ton and in the dark wood by the Ten- 
nessee. They fought 

"For the birthright yet unsold; 
For the history yet untold ; 
For the future yet unrolled;" 

and because they met the great ques- 
tions of liberty in a reverent spirit, 
their names can not perish from the 
earth. On the Southern side, Robert 
E. Lee, the Johnstons, and Stonewall 
Jackson are among the immortals. The 
Union side has a long roll of great men. 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 1 3 

First among them is Abraham Lincoln. 
No words can make a eulogy for him. 
As he himself once said of Washington : 
"Let none attempt to add brightness to 
the sun, or glory to the name of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. He is beyond all eulogy. 
In solemn awe pronounce his name, 
and in its naked, deathless splendor, 
leave it shining on." On either side of 
him stand Grant and Sherman. In the 
opinion of some, Grant, the old com- 
mander, may bear the palm ; but most 
will prefer to think of them as twin 
columns in the vestibule of freedom. 
They lived in love until their lives' end ; 
and together, with a multitude of old 
antagonists and comrades, they have 
taken their places 

" Where, 
Around the throne, the sanctities of heaven 
Stand thick as stars, and from His sight re- 
ceive 
Beatitudes past utterance." 

But the generation that shouted vic- 
tory at Appomattox is almost gone, and 



14 THE NEW GENERATION. 

a new one is left with the destinies of 
the world. The young men that crowd 
into the new Congress; who fill the 
professorial chairs in the great univer- 
sities; the young men that are begin- 
ning to rival the old practitioners in 
the clinic and at the bar; the young 
men in the leading pulpits, and on the 
editorial staff of the great daily papers, — 
all warn us that 

"The older order change th, yielding place to 
new." 

What a splendid generation it is! It 
was born in the years from 1850 to 
1875 — rocked by heroic matrons, car- 
ried in heroic arms. Those were wild 
years that gave us birth. The picture 
on an old spelling-book of the stork 
mother, with her nestlings on her back, 
weary with her long flight and heavy 
burden, and flying low to escape the 
storm, is a true picture of those years. 
The nestlings are chattering on her 
back, as nestlings will, unmindful of 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 1 5 

their danger, while she, with the great- 
est difficulty, bears them to safety. The 
stork mother is the war generation; 
you are the nestlings. There are tears 
on the faces of some yet, which came 
from a father's wet eyes as he bent over 
a baby's face in a cradle, and kissed 
him good-bye, as he marched at the call 
of country. Some of them never came 
back to kiss them away. Childhood's 
memory, for many, is full of tales of 
disaster and sorrow and blood. It is 
the same if you picture the childhood 
of other countries. The Russian youth 
remember the Crimea; the young Ro- 
man will recall the tremor of fear that 
ran through his veins when Victor Em- 
manuel battered down the Porta Pia, 
and inarched up the Via Settembre; 
the young German will never be able 
to forget when he stood at the home 
gate, and cheered the soldiers of Moltke, 
Bismarck, and stout old William, as they 
pushed toward the Austrian frontier; 
nor the gay French lads, the stern, hot 



1 6 THE NEW GENERATION. 

days when they waved the tri-color as 
Napoleon III and the prince imperial 
took their departure for the Army of 
the Rhine. The whole generation was 
baptized in blood, has the martial spirit 
of martial ancestors, and will bring the 
" swing of victory'' to any cause they 
may espouse. 

The generation has not yet had time 
to develop its great souls, nor single 
out those who will make it illustrious. 
That it will contribute its quota of 
great men and great deeds we can not 
doubt. Some of them are sure to win 
honor among men, and renown above 
the skies. The Acts of the Apostles is 
an ever-increasing volume; and the 
chapter of the roll of faith, which be- 
gins in Hebrews, is an ever-expanding 
one; but who shall be added to it from 
our own generation we are not yet able 
to determine. 

This alone will be an excuse if, for a 
moment, we characterize this generation 
by a reference to one of the old Norse 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 1 7 

divinities. The generation is so god- 
like, comes to its place enriched with 
such an abounding harvest of scientific 
discovery, is so full of courage and pur- 
pose and enthusiasm, that it will not 
seem extravagant if, for the purpose of 
illustration, we call it after the name of 
the old Scandinavian god, so honored 
by our Teutonic and Scandinavian 
fathers. 

I like the god Thor. He was the 
son of Odin. He was the strongest of 
all gods and men. The rumble of his 
chariot was thunder. His red beard 
was the only standard in the great war 
with the giants, and Thor was in the 
front of the fight in the twilight of that 
last great day when the giants were 
finally overthrown and driven from the 
earth. He was so mighty, so noble, so 
heroic, that he crowded his name into 
our Christian calendar of the week, and 
there it stands. 

Then there was his terrible hammer. 
With it he built the hall of five hun- 



1 8 THE NEW GENERATION. 

dred columns, leveled great mountains, 
erected great palaces and temples, and 
even destroyed the pestilence. The 
dwarfs made it for him at the command 
of his father Odin. They could fashion 
it, but Thor alone could swing it with 
resistless might. He had the courage 
to use it. Nothing could daunt him. 
No project was too great for his uncon- 
querable spirit and mighty hammer. 
" Either I will find a way, or I will 
make one," he said to his warriors when 
a towering mountain hindered his prog- 
ress. And the Norman knight was 
plainly possessed with the spirit of 
Thor, the Red Beard, when he wore on 
his crest at Hastings, " In neither de- 
mons nor idols do I put my trust, but 
in my own stout heart and in God." 
Among the old Teutons, after their con- 
version, this hammer came to be the 
symbol of the Cross. 

The application of this legend of 
Thor to the rising generation is easy to 
make. We are the sons of Odin — sons 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 1 9 

of godlike men who helped to push 
the race upward to the dawn. The 
young man of this generation, with the 
faith of the Cross in his bosom, is Thor. 
They are sons of the Most High ; for the 
sacred writer carries back the human 
pedigree to a divine root when he says, 
"Who was the son of Abraham; who 
was the son of Adam ; who was the 
son of God ;" the children of God there- 
fore heirs to the promise, "The works 
that I do shall ye do also, and greater 
works than these. " 

We, too, war against giants. Corrupt 
politics, the accursed saloon business, 
greed of gain, vice, the opium-traffic, 
slavery, and the pagan world, are a 
group of confederate Anaks as mighty 
as any the Norse god had to overcome. 
One of the earliest memories of my life 
is of going down to the old farm-yard 
gate, waving a flag, and cheering for 
Abraham Lincoln, as a regiment of 
newly recruited soldiers marched away 
to the front near the close of our Civil 



20 THE NEW GENERATION. 

War. They were marching on one of 
the greatest errands that ever called 
men to battle. But as I see this new 
generation, sons of veterans, the gener- 
ation of the Epworth League, invincible 
Thors, march against the giant evils 
which still remain to be conquered on 
this earth, it seems to me that they 
march under the noblest commission 
that God ever gave to man. 

The dwarfs made the hammer of 
Thor, at the command of his father. 
This new generation enters upon its 
work with special forces and opportu- 
nities ready at hand, such as no other 
generation before ever possessed. Men 
of the older times, dwarfs in comparison 
with ourselves, molded these forces for 
us as the dwarfs fashioned the hammer 
of Thor. They did it at the command 
of God. 

" For I doubt not through the ages one in- 
creasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with 
the process of the suns." 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 21 

It is the greatest generation that has 
ever appeared on earth, because of it- 
self, because of God's special prepara- 
tion for it, and because it stands on the 
shoulders of a mighty past. Every 
generation behind has lifted this rising 
one up into the light. Mt. Everest is 
the highest mountain in the world, not 
merely of itself, but because of the long 
lift of land from the ocean to the center 
of Asia. Mt. Everest really begins in 
the gradual incline of the land from the 
shores of the Indian Ocean. It swells 
higher inland ; then comes the great 
plateau across Hindostan; then the 
foothills of the mountains on its north- 
ern border. These rise into the lofty 
Himalaya range, that stretches for fifteen 
hundred miles across the interior of 
Asia. Out of this range of great, tower- 
ing peaks, with their bosoms and crests 
wrapped in eternal snows, and upborne 
by all the rest, rises Mt. Everest, the 
highest mountain in the world. So this 
magnificent generation, "time's noblest 



2 2 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

offspring," " the heir of all the ages," 
looms up the mightiest and tallest, be- 
cause it is upborne by all that has gone 
before. 

Long-gone ages stored up the coal 
and petroleum which we employ. Watt 
discovered the use of steam ; Stephenson 
made the steam-engine; Franklin cap- 
tured our electric messenger in the 
clouds; Madame Galvani indirectly gave 
us the electric battery; Fulton built the 
steamboat; Morse invented the tele- 
graph; Bell the telephone; and Edison 
the electric light. Every generation that 
is gone forged a weapon for the hand of 
Thor, or put some resource at his com- 
mand. 

The men of this generation are the 
first to have an outlook upon a real 
world. You have no doubt noticed the 
growth of certain words in our English 
vocabulary which indicate the cosmo- 
politan era. Spinoza, though false in 
philosophy and religion to the core, 
seems to have set the fashion for express- 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 23 

ing the world's unity by his famous re- 
ligious idiom. Along with pantheism 
have come like councils of all varieties. 
We have a World's White Cross Move- 
ment; a World's Peace Convention; a 
World's Christian Temperance Union. 
There are Pan-Methodists, Pan-Pres- 
byterians, and other ecumenical gather- 
ings without number. We have just 
learned to ally ourselves with men of 
common opinions about the globe. 
Every man on the planet is our neigh- 
bor, and we strike hands with him. 
Terence translates Menander, "I am a 
man, and everything human interests 
me ;" but " everything human " was to 
his mind the smallest fragment of our 
present-day humanity. He knew a 
little of the world which lay imme- 
diately about the Mediterranean and 
along the Nile, and comprised in the 
Euphrates Valley. But the men of 
those days knew practically nothing of 
the dwellers in the next valley, or of 
the inhabitants on the bank of a neigh- 



24 THE NEW GENERATION. 

boring river. Each community, like a 
land-locked lake, had an altitude pecu- 
liar to itself, lived its own narrow life, 
had its own thought and its own hope, 
nor ever caught the ebb and flow of 
the great sea of humanity about them. 
We live in a real world. Like some 
mighty incoming tide that swells in 
every nook and inlet of the ocean shore, 
our thoughts and hopes and fears rise 
and fall in every local community the 
round world over, and break with 
beneficence or sorrow at the feet of 
every man. 

Man has greatly extended his borders 
and enlarged his horizon, and Thor is 
the heir to this greater world. Man 
has surveyed the planet between the 
polar circles, measured the height of 
the mountain ranges, and computed the 
ebb and flow of the tide and of the 
ocean currents. He has gone back 
through long histories, which he has 
deciphered from old inscriptions, and 
read from the remains of clay libraries. 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 25 

He has enlarged himself laterally by 
philanthropy and science. In the con- 
duct of himself he has had recourse to 
his understanding. We are now in the 
period of intellection. The intellectual 
man is in the full splendor of his day. 
Mind has put into his hand the key 
with which to unlock nature's wealth 
and mysteries. With it he has com- 
pressed the world into the limits of a 
Roman march. He hangs a mass of 
iron in the air, and calls it a bridge ; 
he dives through a mountain, and calls 
it a tunnel ; he listens with his audi- 
phone over an ant-hill, and it sounds 
like the hum of spindles. The age of 
aluminum runs parallel with the age of 
electricity, and out of common clay, by 
a new process, men are building better 
homes for their children, better seats 
for education, better temples for the 
worship of the living God. What new 
monarch is this? Lightnings illuminate 
his palaces, waft his rich argosies, and 
bear his messages ; he whispers around 



26 THE NEW GENERATION. 

the globe ; every song of liberty from 
the round world comes into his ears, 
and the groans from every dungeon are 
heard by him. 

He aspires to become a citizen of the 
universe. He has overleaped the bound- 
aries of terrestrial space; peers, by his 
telescope, into the craters of the moon's 
extinct volcanoes ; with his spectroscope 
he analyzes the elements of sun or star 
better than if he stood upon its surface 
with hammer and retort and crucible. 
The air has become luminous with un- 
utterable secrets. He knows " where 
light dwelleth," and measures the orbit 
of the farthermost stars. A new rela- 
tion is discovered existing between the 
soul and body. Hermann Lotze has given 
it statement. The old psychology said 
"the soul acts where it is; n the new 
declares "the soul is where it acts." 
And so in any part of the universe, 
where fancy or imagination can wing 
its flight or light carry an embassy, 
subtle observations may be carried on, 



•» . • 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 27 

inductions made, and the soul come 
back to earth again with philosophical 
assurance added to the truths of revela- 
tion. Some of the conclusions at which 
he has arrived are: The superiority of 
mind over matter; the body is the least 
important element in our existence; 
the intellectual man must soon yield 
to the spiritual ; man, the physical, has 
had his day; man is a spirit, and may 
become the child of God. 

God himself has seemingly bared his 
omnipotent right arm to forge weapons 
for our using, and has opened avenues 
for the enterprise of this new genera- 
tion never opened before. This volume 
is intended to set some of them before 
you. They are so manifestly the work 
of God, they bring with them such re- 
sponsibilities, and are so portentous, 
and so inextricably interwoven with the 
future destinies of the race, that thought- 
ful men tremble before them. God is 
calling to men down through the eter- 
nal stars once more. Each generation 



28 THE NEW GENERATION. 

must make its answer to the Eternal 
Spirit. I wonder what answer this gen- 
eration will make. It stands upon the 
threshold of such a dominion and with 
powers and opportunities such as were 
never before delivered to man. 

All true men are looking for evidences 
that God is still guiding the world. 
We know that the Lord of hosts is with 
us; but we wish to project his presence 
as a thought, and suggest its applica- 
tion to this generation. There are far- 
reaching movements in our day. In- 
tercommunication, the press, the spread 
of the English language, and the growth 
of democracy the round world over, are 
some of them. These great providences 
are like guide-boards along the path of 
the ages, and should show us conclu- 
sively that God still controls the affairs 
of men. The new generation, if it has 
the spiritual insight which it should 
possess, ought to be able to detect the 
hand of God stretched downward to the 
race in these great events; and men 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 29 

morally, intellectually, and spiritually 
should rise to meet God in his plan — 
should co-operate with him, and yield 
obedience to him in his sovereign sway. 
The conviction grows upon the rever- 
ent mind that sweeping changes in the 
progress of Christ's kingdom upon the 
earth are about to occur; and some 
have even dared to hope that the Al- 
mighty has commissioned this rising 
generation anew, and given it the pur- 
pose and the grace to bring the world 
to the Redeemer's feet. 

The great privileges which this gen- 
eration enjoys involve the correlated 
question of duty, and to the willing 
mind express a command. They are 
like the block letters which were placed 
before the first blind deaf-mute who 
learned to read. She had sat for eight- 
een years in the dumb silence of de- 
spair. She had never known what the 
word mother meant, nor received one of 
the tender endearments which make 
childhood and girlhood the happiest 



30 THE NEW GENERATION. 

period of life. A philanthropist thought 
he could teach her to read, and began 
to instruct her. He placed a row of 
blocks before her, and for weary weeks 
she could only finger them, and won- 
der. In after years she herself says: 
"One day it flashed upon me that they 
were trying to talk to me." It was 
only after weary months of patient won- 
derment that it came to her that those 
blocks spelled out her name. There they 
were : " Iv-a-u-r-a B-r-i-d-g-m-a-n. " 
They were trying to talk to her, and 
they spelled the message of her parents — 
the message of love and philanthropy 
and religion — HER OWN name. 

God once spoke with men face to 
face; afterward he sent the prophets, 
and then his Son. We are now living 
under the dispensation of the Holy 
Ghost. These movements among men, 
coincident with the coming of a new 
generation upon the stage of human 
action, indicate as assuredly the com- 
mands of God as the letters before 



THOR AND HIS HAMMER. 3 1 

Laura Bridgman spelled her name. In- 
tercommunication and the press point 
the way to enlarged missionary enter- 
prises. Emigration to America, and the 
opening of China, Japan, and Africa, 
crowd the same conviction home. The 
world is to be speedily evangelized. 
The rise of young people's organiza- 
tions, like the Epworth League and the 
Christian Endeavor Society, indicates the 
agents who are to execute these pur- 
poses so plainly expressed. They all 
suggest to the disciples of our Lord 
that the whole world is soon to be nom- 
inally Christian ; and that this new gen- 
eration has the fiber, blood, and vantage- 
ground of opportunity for bringing this 
to pass. The knights of the Middle 
Ages, who hung upon the words of Peter 
the Hermit and Urban II as they spoke 
of the rescue of .the Holy Sepulcher 
from the hands of infidels, cried out: 
"It is the will of God!" This co-ordi- 
nation of events and agents will surely 
suggest to you that God intends, and 



32 THE NEW GENERATION. 

that soon, to redeem the world. They 
become a prophecy of the glad day 
when old earth shall roll in a sea of 
light, and bathe itself in the glory of 
God. 



II. 

Intercommunication 

3 



"And there shall be no more sea." 

— ST. JOHN. 

"Whither, 'midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last hues of day, 
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue 
Thv solitarv wav ? 



There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along the pathless coast, — 
The desert and illimitable air, — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

He who from zone to zone 
Guides through the air thy solitary flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Shall guide my feet aright." 

— BRYANT. 

" For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind, 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind." 

— FABER. 

34 



INTERCOMMUNICATION. 

THERE are only a few lessons which 
history teaches with any distinct- 
ness. One is, that the universe is built 
on moral foundations. A second — and 
there is no question that history teaches 
it plainly — is, that among races of men 
isolation produces degeneration, and 
intercourse with other nations tends to 
elevation. Savagery, superstition, and 
ignorance depend upon separation. 
Civilization is advanced by intercourse. 
The ocean was the great barrier against 
intercommunication in ancient times. 
Mountain ranges, deserts, and great 
rivers kept men apart ; so did differ- 
ences of language. Still they could 
climb the mountains, swim the rivers, 
and make themselves understood by 
signs. The ocean was impassable. 
The civilizing process was well begun 
when the first log canoe pushed across 

35 



3 6 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

some narrow channel of the great sea, 
and its occupant first began to observe 
another race of men. The sea kept 
out Julius Caesar from Britain; but bet- 
ter Caesar and his legions than the 
horrid superstitions and deeds of cruelty 
that hid their heads when the Romans 
landed on that gloomy island. No 
wonder that John, in his vision of the 
great white throne and the new heaven 
and the new earth, said that there 
would come in God's own time and 
plan an end to isolation — u And there 
shall be no more sea." 

The glory of the apocalyptic age 
approaches. We have learned in our 
day that the ocean which divides, com- 
bines also. It is the easiest of high- 
ways. The Appian Way would carry 
you by easy stages to Brindisi; but the 
sea is the smooth pavement for a 
journey between zones or about the 
planet. By it you may easily and safely 
pass from the lands that lie under 
Arcturus, and the twin Triones, to 



INTERCOMMUNICA TION. 37 

where Canopus and the Southern Cross 
rule in the evening sky. Great ocean- 
ferries ply between the sister continents, 
and swift sea-chariots will carry you in 
a day over the same course where once 
the great mariners of history beat their 
way against head-winds for weeks. 
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, 
Romans, Norsemen, Crusaders, Portu- 
guese, and Spaniards have all in turn 
pointed their course over its bosom by 
the stars ; but none, like the English, 
have made the ocean the great bond of 
the world's union. The sail has been 
replaced by the smoking steam-demon, 
and the oar has been superseded by the 
firm blade of the screw. The world, a 
single commonwealth, lies to-day em- 
braced in the arms of Neptune. Every 
deep sea-current is marked and mapped, 
every movement of air estimated. 
Under the waves go the great lines of 
electrical communication by which we 
whisper to the antipodes. " The sea! 
the sea!" shouted the ten thousand 



3 8 THE NE W GENERA TIOJV. 

Greeks, and so shouts the new gener- 
ation, as by it to heathen lands, 

"We hurry onward to extinguish hell, 
With our fresh souls, our younger hope, 
And God's maturity of purpose." 

But the distances by land have also 
been practically annihilated. Robert 
Peel, summoned home from Italy to be- 
come first minister to Her Majesty, 
Queen Victoria, traveled as Julius 
Caesar did, B. C. 52. He used relays 
of horses, urged over the mountains 
and valleys with endless jolt by day and 
night. We make the distance now 
seated in an elegant railway carriage, 
writing a book, or reading the news 
of the world. Some superannuated 
preacher will tell you how, in the early 
days on the frontier, he took weeks to 
travel from one State to another ; his 
all in a wagon, wading the streams, and 
swimming the rivers ; his body racked 
with fever, but his soul joyful. Aaron 
Wood, of sainted memory in Indiana 



INTERCOMMUNICA TION. 3 9 

Methodism, spent four days journeying 
from Plymouth, Indiana, to Valparaiso. 
You can make the journey now in one 
hour. Railway lines join every large 
city in the world not united by the sea. 
Five great railroad trunk-lines unite the 
cities of the Atlantic to those of the 
Pacific Slope. You pass in a single rail- 
way coach from New York to Mexico 
City. From thence a line will soon be 
completed which will carry you to Cape 
Horn. It is not a dream to suppose 
that some day you may pass by rail 
from the Cape Colony, through Central 
Africa, and through Europe and Asia, to 
Behring Sea, by ferry over Behring Sea, 
and thence across two continents to 
Cape Horn. The road is already built 
two-thirds of the way. Rapidity of 
travel increases every year. The Em- 
pire State express travels a distance of 
four hundred and forty miles at a sched- 
ule rate of fifty-five miles an hour. It is 
now only twenty hours' ride from New 
York to Chicago. O steam ! thou art 



40 THE NEW GENERATION. 

the strong Jove of the nineteenth cen- 
tury ! 

" Harness me down with your iron bands; 
Be sure of your curb and rein, 
For I scorn the power of your puny hands, 

As the tempest scorns the chain. 
How I laughed as I lay concealed from 
sight 
For many a countless hour, 
At the childish boast of human might, 
And the pride of human power! 

When I measured the panting courser's 
speed, 
Or the flight of the courier dove, 
As it bore the law a king decreed, 

Or the lines of impatient love, 
O, I could not but think how the world 
would feel 
When these were outstripped by far, 
When I should be bound to the rushing 
keel, 
Or chained to the flying car !" 

But swifter even than steam is the 
electric spark. Your neighbor is the 
man you can talk with ; the man you 
see, and who lives next door to you. 
Telegraphy has brought the whole world 



INTERCOMMUNICATION. 4 1 

to our doors, made every man our neigh- 
bor, and we influence every man as our 
neighbor on the planet, for we talk round 
the earth. Under the sea and over the 
land go our messages, outstripping the 
sun in his flight. The markets of 
the world rise and fall at the summons 
of a click over the wires. We fling 
down the gage of battle by telegraph. 
Some battles of a hundred years ago 
would never have been fought had 
Morse been alive then to send the news 
of peace by telegraph. General Jack- 
son won his great victory at New Or- 
leans after peace had been actually de- 
clared ; the use of electricity would 
have robbed us of that triumph, but it 
would also have given back to the 
weeping wives and mothers of England 
those long rows of the slain. A hun- 
dred improvements have been made in 
our daily life by it. Postal facilities, 
newspapers, pleasure excursions, char- 
ities, and missions are aided and supple- 
mented by it. 



4 2 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

Xo sincerely thoughtful man can con- 
template these great changes wrought 
by intercommunication, and not feel 
that God is still busy in the affairs of 
men, that he is preparing to enforce 
the older dispensation of love, or to give 
a new revelation to the race. Inter- 
communication is really wonderful. 
What does it mean? How shall we 
interpret it to mind and to spirit? 
What moral induction shall we make 
from these forces and facts of seemingly 
only material progress? 

It means first, longer life to the race ; 
not by lengthening the seventy years, 
but by crowding more into them. The 
writer sat when a boy on his grand- 
father's knee, and heard him tell how, 
in the old days, he took the wife of his 
youth and went out to that great fron- 
tier State of Ohio. The second autumn, 
not having money to pay the fare on the 
stage that ran east from Pittsburg, he 
walked back five hundred miles to see 
his father and mother ; and one winter, 



INTERCOMMUNICA TION. 43 

when a letter came over the Alleghanies 
that my great-grandmother was sick 
unto death, my grandparents, hand in 
hand, walked back home, taking twenty- 
four days to make the journey, to re- 
ceive their mother's dying blessing. I, 
their grandson, was shot through the 
same distance the other night in twelve 
hours. One day with me is therefore 
worth forty-eight of my grandfather's 
days; one year of mine is worth forty- 
eight of his, and a young man twenty 
years of age in this new generation is as 
old, under the providence oi God, as 
was that world's gray father before the 
flood, Methuselah, with his locks whit- 
ened with nine hundred and sixty 
winters. Life has been tremendously 
lengthened and enlarged and beautified 
in this way. 

Individual and national life under this 
thought assumes a new importance. 
We are citizens of the world, and our 
individual righteousness or sin becomes 
a rill of holiness or corruption in the 



44 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

life-current of the entire generation. 
We can no longer remain idle specta- 
tors of great national conflicts, or allow 
abuses to grow in the territory of a 
neighboring nation. The cholera germs 
in the pools in the valley at Mecca 
will taint the world ; and our liberty 
or despotism, our national integrity or 
our national corruption and dishonor, 
will be heralded at the assize of a 
planet, and heard and sentenced before 
the judgment tribunal of the race. The 
Irish question, the Panama scandal, 
every South American revolution, every 
new German army bill, every instance 
of papal aggression, every uprising of 
barbarous hordes in Africa, becomes a 
matter of world-wide inquiry ; and it is 
no impertinence to bring them under 
the light and criticism of the world's 
public opinion. The body is one, but 
many members. The world is one, 
though composed of many nations ; 
henceforth it will be saved or poisoned 
as a whole. 



INTERCOMMUNICATION. 45 

It means more than this; it means a 
universal religion. Some faith will per- 
meate the world. Some sublime prin- 
ciple of love and sacrifice, embodied in 
some beautiful son of the race, will 
surely win its "way to all hearts. Two 
great missionary faiths are now strug- 
gling with each other for universal 
sway — our own Christianity, and Mo- 
hammedanism. They are face to face 
with each other in every great city of 
the Orient. They are contending for 
supremacy in Africa. One of them is 
sure to go down before the other. Both 
religions claim descent from Abraham. 
Christianity teaches free will ; Moham- 
medanism is a system of fatalism. 
Christianity holds the Western Conti- 
nent, all of Europe, and divides the 
Orient with the followers of Mohammed. 
A crisis impends in the great struggle 
between the two religions. The con- 
test will soon be determined one way or 
the other. The new generation will see 
it settled. 



46 THE NEW GENERATION. 

Politically, Christianity has the 
stronger powers at its back; but Mo- 
hammedanism has a stronger affinity 
for the desert races, among whom the 
battle is now waging. The religion of 
the world is staked as an issue. It will 
be determined in your day, and by you. 

" Throb on, dull pulse of thunder, beat 
From answering beach to beach; 
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, 
And melt the chains of each. 

For, lo ! the fall of ocean's wall 
Space mocked, and time outrun; 

And round the world the thought of all 
Is as the thought of one." 



III. 

The Press. 



"Superstition! that horrid incubus which 
dwelt in darkness, with all its racks and poison 
chalices and foul sleeping draughts, is passing 
away without return." — cari,yi<e. 

" At my nativity 
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, 
Of burning cressets ; at my birth 
The frame and huge foundations of the earth 
Shaked like a coward." — Shakespeare. 

"And further, by these, my son, be admon- 
ished : Of making many books there is no end." 

— ECCI,ESIASTES. 

" Not too high nor good 
For human nature's daily food ; 
And yet, withal, a spirit bright, 
With something of an angel light." 

— WORDSWORTH. 

48 



THE PRESS. 

NO genuine portrait of Johannes 
Gutenberg is known. Like the 
discoverer of America, the inventor of 
printing by movable metal types never 
sat for a portrait. Those you see on 
the medals and plates are all fictitious. 
The records of his life which are left 
are very scanty. We scarcely know 
when he was born and when he died. 
He spent some of his best years run- 
ning away from his creditors; sold his 
coat to develop his invention ; and died 
poor, friendless, childless, and alone. 

While his portrait can not hang in the 
galleries, his name ought to be placed 
among those of the world's great wor- 
thies. The printing-press, types, books, 
libraries, morning and evening newspa- 
pers in many editions, are now become 
common and familiar facts to us. It is 
all but impossible now to throw back the 

4 49 



50 THE NEW GENERATION. 

imagination into the time when there 
were none of these, or to bring back in 
fancy the year when the grand discovery 
of printing stirred the soul of every 
monk in Europe, and touched the ear- 
nest men of those old days with awe and 
wonder like a new revelation from 
heaven. The spectator to-day who 
looks back is sure to be impatient with 
the slow progress of the art of printing, 
and to criticise the first types as 
crude and rudimentarv. But those 
rude wooden and metal pieces are the 
omens of progress. That friendless 
German laid the foundations of the art 
that dominates the world. John Guten- 
berg, from thy brain came the mightiest 
of the whole race of modern giants, 
and the longest and sharpest arrow in 
the quiver of Thor. 

Who has not stopped to watch while 
the parade workmen in a great exposi- 
tion mold and polish those little pieces 
of metal called types ? Xot only the 
alphabet, but whole libraries lie in that 



THE PRESS. 5 I 

little font. Constitutions and procla- 
mations of liberty are there, waiting for 
a patriot to arrange them. Poems the 
purest are there, concealed in unmeas- 
ured numbers; and histories and philos- 
ophies will start from that font at the 
summons of men with historical and 
philosophical insight. Each of them 
will help spell out a word; and the 
word itself may be a portion of the 
record of some great deed that will 
shake a throne, or of an action so base 
that men will be reminded of their old 
savagery, and hang their heads in 
shame. To-night, while you sleep, they 
will be flung by machines into great 
pages for to-morrow's morning papers — 
the history of the world for to-day. 

The newspaper is the daughter of the 
press. The electric telegraph is the 
servant of both. The royal mandates of 
the newspaper and its servitors have 
gone out into all the earth. The tele- 
graph is listening for the news in every 
land, prying for it into the secrets of 



52 THE NEW GENERATION. 

courts and cabinets and cabals. Into 
those pieces of inanimate metal the 
lines of all accumulated knowledge will 
focus. There the news will be en- 
graved, and the quick induction be re- 
corded. 

Who does not marvel at it? It is so 
novel, so curious, so incomprehensible. 
It works its sleight-of-hand with such 
amazing rapidity that wiseacres become 
children again, and stop to wonder 
at it. The echo in the mountain glen 
will repeat the words of the shepherd 
or traveler a hundred times before it 
becomes inaudible ; but here is a play- 
thing or a deity, call it what you may, 
which will re-echo your words and 
thoughts a hundred thousand times, 
and fling into the ears of the world 
what you whispered last night in your 
chamber. Were it powerless for good 
or evil ; were God not calling to us again 
through it, and reminding us of the 
eternal verities, we could well wonder, 
and laugh, and pass on. 



THE PRESS. 53 

There can be no doubt about its 
power. John Gutenberg, Protestantism 
calls thee blessed. The printing-press 
made the Reformation possible. The 
printing-press aided the revival of learn- 
ing, quickened the mental activities of 
the age, and roused the spirit of polit- 
ical liberty which we discern in all the 
movements for ecclesiastical freedom. 
It made the Bible of Martin Luther in 
the vernacular possible. Martin Luther 
and John Gutenberg are the twin arch- 
angels who lifted the somber curtains 
from the frightening gloom of the Dark 
Ages, beat back ignorance and super- 
stition, and turned up the dim torch of 
philosophy and science in the sixteenth 
to the bright light of the nineteenth 
century. The one translated, the other 
printed the Reformation. 

We smile now at the credulity of 
those times. Ban, book, and candle are 
nothing to us. We congratulate our- 
selves on our better judgment as we 
read the decisions of great judges in 



54 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

cases of supposed witchcraft ; but the 
printing-press before our time grappled 
with and destroyed the widespread con- 
viction of the ancient world that the 
universe was sometimes misguided by 
devilish forces. We smile at Raleigh's 
story of the land of the Amazons, and 
old sea-tales of floating islands, and 
seas so remote that winds and stars 
never approached them. But the press 
banished them for us. We have played 
with globes and orreries from child- 
hood, and have forgotten that once holy 
mother Church racked men and burnt 
them because they believed the world 
was round. We inhale the spirit of 
Protestantism with our earliest breath, 
unconscious that once popes and bishops 
hurled their hottest anathemas against 
it, and but for the printing-press, with 
which to sow the Word of God, they 
might have strangled it in its cradle. 

It is strong for pulling down evil, and 
mighty for upbuilding good. It has 
undermined faith in mythic exploits, 



THE PRESS. 55 

but has substituted in their place broad 
narratives of substantial facts. Homeric 
heroes and panoplied knights no longer 
fill the pages of the world's history with 
their councils and sallies, but the press 
still recounts and glorifies the deeds 
of those valiant souls who sailed out 
into unknown seas, fighting, discover- 
ing, building highways, and colonizing 
where others who come after them 
should fearlessly sail and tread and 
dwell. It has a trumpet of fame for 
every Wilberforce, Argyle, Livingstone, 
Grant, and Lincoln ; for every Wycklif, 
Columbus, Howard, Nightingale, and 
Gladstone ; for all these, " who by faith 
subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- 
ness, obtained promises, stopped the 
mouths of lions. " 

It is a moral teacher. It sounds 
across the centuries yet the great truth 
that there is a moral Governor in the 
universe ; that the foundations of the 
earth are righteousness and truth ; that 
in the long run it shall be well with the 



56 THE NEW GENERATION. 

righteous and ill with the wicked. 
Every man has his own philosophy. 
You may believe that you know that 
you know that you know, or you may 
believe that you do not know that you 
know that you know. There is only 
one philosophy of history, and the press 
is a many-tongued voice calling across 
the ages this single certitude of history 
recorded by experience ; namely, that 
the " wages of sin is death, " and " to 
depart from evil is understanding. " 
Opinions may alter, fashions change, 
nations rise and perish ; but in the end 
sin will pay its price, and virtue have 
its reward. Holding out .the torch of 
experience, the press throws forward a 
glimmer into the dark to light up the 
path which we must tread. Be assured 
that while falsehood and injustice may 
long grow and thrive, while oppression 
may fatten on weakness, and hypocrisy 
long masquerade in the garb of religion, 
at the last justice and truth shall have 
the throne, and come to their kingdom. 



THE PRESS. 57 

The press is an angel flying in the 
midst of heaven, and echoes and re- 
echoes in the ears of men the moral 
law of righteousness written on the 
tablets of eternity. 

In the midst of your doubts about 
the future of religion it will reassure 
you with its tales of the few poor fisher- 
men, who, from an obscure lake in 
Palestine, under a divine commission, 
went forth and assumed spiritual au- 
thority over the hearts of mankind. It 
has its sad chapters, and very early it 
will point you to Stephen's martyrdom. 
But from the crowd that watches him 
in his dying agony, you shall see Paul 
singled out to take his place, and 
be baptized for the dead. When the 
bright sword flashes, and Paul has been 
beheaded at the place of the Three 
Fountains, you may think the end has 
come ; but it will cheer you with the 
names of Timothy, Titus, and Clement, 
the three mighties who grew from the 
spots where his blood was spilled. If 



58 THE NEW GENERATION. 

you are but patient, you will find that 
persecutions will not destroy the Church. 
Julian's apostasy does not harm it; am- 
bitious popes and kneeling emperors 
only hinder it. And now, if you bid it, 
it will scatter these simple stories which 
have such power to reassure the faith 
of humanity, for you everywhere. This 
new generation can sow books and 
tracts and Bibles in India, China, and 
Japan, knowing that the harvest will be 
virtue and truth, and, at the last, the 
universal kingdom of Jesus Christ. 

Is it good? You admit its power, 
but is it moral ? Does its touch purify 
or taint ? Take its red-backed, green- 
backed, thrice-daily envy and greed and 
jealousy. Take its bedizened vice, its 
thousand gibes at goodness, its base 
thoughts that grow into base deeds, its 
invasion of your privacy, its alliance 
with rum and the saloon, its sneers at 
political morality, its jests at your Sab- 
bath, its mockery of justice; weigh 
all these things in the balance, sit in 



THE PRESS. 59 

honest judgment, and then tell me, is 
this heaven-sent ? Can this maudlin, pro- 
fane, giant press have a moral power in 
it, and ever become the ambassador of 
God? 

Let me plead for it. It should mirror 
public sentiment. By right it should 
give us power to see ourselves as oth- 
ers see us. If the press is full of mur- 
der, arson, scandal, bribery, and po- 
litical corruption, it is because these 
are in the world. Man's heart is deceit- 
ful above all things, and desperately 
wicked. When the press ceases to tell 
of human faults, it will be a dead insti- 
tution. The press must reflect, and 
there is no true likeness without a 
shadow. Let the press, then, throw 
vice upon the glass until the world 
hates it, and paint beauty and truth 
there until the world learns to love it. 
Happy for us that it reflects good as 
w T ell as evil. It may tell of the black 
forces of evil, but it brings me also the 
shouts of men and angels all over the 



6o THE NEW GENERATION. 

world. It tells of Mackay and his life 
of sacrifice after his soul has gone from 
Uganda. Who would have heard of 
him without the press ? It tells of 
William Taylor's victories in Africa, and 
of the scattering of the gospel like the 
myriad leaves of autumn over India. 
Like a beacon-light flashing from hill to 
hill, it tells me every day that the Sun 
of righteousness is chasing the mists 
from the hilltops, that there is sunlight 
in the valley, and that soon the last long 
shout of the harvest-home shall go up 
from a redeemed earth. 

The Church has need of the press. I 
wish the young men who read this brief 
chapter no greater responsibility than 
to sit in the editorial chair of a great 
daily paper. If one such should read 
it, let me say to you now, have a care 
what you say to-morrow, and how you 
say it. Eternity's mists are upon your 
forehead ; eternity's ocean is beating at 
your feet. Warning voices are calling 
from drifting planks and shattered 



THE PRESS. 6 1 

wrecks all about you ; they are the 
cries of lost souls. Some storm-tossed 
ones may escape the breakers and reach 
the harbor, if you do your duty. I 
stood yesterday on the North River 
wharf, and watched a great steamer 
push out across the Atlantic. One man 
on the bridge held the life of my old 
college friend and the lives of two 
thousand others in his hand. Two men 
flung a hundred thousand other men 
into a death-grapple at Shiloh. Young 
man, on the staff of a great daily paper 
have a care. You hold a greater re- 
sponsibility than the man on the bridge 
or the general in the tent. You hold 
the destiny of souls in your hand. To- 
morrow you write the words that may 
goad on to despair doubting, trembling, 
hoping souls, and push them to the 
gates of death; or, if you pen them 
well, which shall guide up the rainbow 
path to heaven. The curse of God and 
men will be upon you if you drive one 
immortal soul to ruin, and send him 



62 THE NEW GENERATION. 

forsaken down the path to oblivion. 
Turn the men who read your words fair 
and clear for temperance, the Sabbath, 
the Church, to the Cross, and towards 
the city of foundations, whose builder 
and whose maker is God. I feel an in- 
expressible solicitude for you. Write 
so justly, so gently, so charitably, that 
when you point, men shall behold the 
Savior of mankind; and then, when you 
are in your grave, your words shall go 
speeding on the errands of humanity. 



IV. 

Democracy. 



63 



" Ring out false pride in place and blood, 
The civic slander and the spite ; 
Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good." 

— TENNYSON. 

* The whole world is coming every year to the 
level of republicanism and self-government." 

— w. T. STEAD. 

" The monarchy assuredly is not bound up in 
the annual payment of ,£4,000 pounds to a wealthy 
nobleman for walking backward with a colored 
stick on state occasions." 

— HENRY LABOUCHERE. 

" Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, bar- 
barian, Scythian, bond nor free : but Christ is all, 
and in all." — ST. paul. 

64 



DEMOCRACY. 

THAT the world has changed, the 
stars themselves witness. The sky 
to the Latin farmer was a dial-plate on 
which the stars were pointers, and the 
constellations his monthly almanac, from 
which he learned the best time to prune 
and sow and reap. The morning star 
called him to labor, and the evening 
star sent him home to supper and to 
rest. Every star was to him a deity, or 
the abode of one. And what we call 
science has changed all this. The new 
generation counts its hours on the 
mechanism of its own hands. Sirius 
and Orion still pass nightly over our 
heads in splendid procession, and are 
nothing more to us than so much mat- 
ter in space whose sidereal longitudes 
w T e have fixed, and whose chemical 
composition we have obtained through 
the spectroscope. We have all gone 

5 65 



66 THE NEW GENERATION, 

searching for material causes, and many 
of us have been landed by this self- 
same science in the blank vacancy of 
spiritual negation. 

Along with science has come democ- 
racy. It would be difficult to explain 
the comradeship between them, but the 
fact itself can not be denied. Science 
has discovered and found the tools 
which, under moral control, will elevate 
and ameliorate the condition of the 
race. It has made necessary less 
drudgery and degrading toil. Science 
has educated the vast aggregate of 
human beings most interested in these 
changes by the school and the press. 
The people, since the invention of gun- 
powder, have been drilled in large 
armies. In the modern times they have 
been organized in large factories. 
Science has thus made democracy con- 
scious of its power and able to make 
use of it, and so has deserved the friend- 
ship of democracy. 

Science has also taught that not work, 



DEMOCRACY. 67 

but idleness, is degrading. Between 
the old Greek democracies and ours 
there was one vital difference. They 
employed slaves. Certain mean work 
was to be done, and slaves captured in 
war were compelled to do it. Even a 
man who sold his service was a slave 
all but in name. Your free Greek was 
above labor. Aritstotle prescribes four 
studies for the citizen, — grammar, draw- 
ing, music, and gymnastics. These 
subjects open endless avenues of knowl- 
edge ; but work, the greatest educator 
after all, the great Greek left out. 
Books, lectures, and discussions are a 
wonderful complement to work, but 
never can become a substitute for it. 
Science allows no illusions, and teaches 
that in work alone is salvation. It has 
thus dignified labor, and again deserves 
well of democracy. 

Democracy is friendly to Christianity 
also. It can be illustrated in the same 
way. Christianity has made an end of 
the notion that manual labor is dis- 



68 THE NEW GENERATION. 

honorable. The founder of Christian- 
ity was a workingman, and democracy 
gets its inspiration from the Nazarene. 
The dumb, toiling millions that he 
came to save were thus made conscious 
of courage and nobleness. Christ was 
the friend of industry, and dignified it. 
He chose fishermen as his first apostles. 
St. Paul, the first great missionary, was 
a tent-maker. Christianity has never 
allowed idleness, and whatever charge 
may be brought against the monastery 
of the Dark Ages, it must be confessed 
that the industry of the monks was one 
great element of safety to civilization in 
the mediaeval night. Industry is essen- 
tial to Christian character. Christian- 
ity will tolerate no idleness even on the 
part of unfortunate eldest sons. Cour- 
age, prudence, justice, and wisdom come 
with labor only, and every man worth 
calling a man must be able to maintain 
himself by honest industry. 

The first result of democracy, natu- 
rally enough, has been political. It 



DEMOCRACY. 69 

enunciated the doctrine of equality, and 
armed itself against all who denied it. 
Its first struggle was with the occu- 
pants of thrones, and the political 
result is a western hemisphere of re- 
publics, the practical republics of Eng- 
land and France, and the constitutional 
limitations upon other European sover- 
eigns. The following list of dates will 
mark the political growth of democracy 
as embodied in constitutional form : 
1688, the English Revolution; 1787, 
the American Constitution; 1789, the 
French Revolution and Constitutional 
Convention; 1810, the United States of 
Chili; 1861, the United States of Co- 
lombia ; 1864, the United States of 
Venezuela; 1870, the French Republic; 
1889, the United States of Brazil. 
Even 1893 is notable for a wide exten- 
sion of the suffrage in Belgium, and 
the largest concession to democracy. 

Its next struggle was with the aris- 
tocracy. The nobles helped it against 
thrones, but now its struggle is with 



70 THE NEW GENERATION. 

the nobles themselves. Aristocracy of 
birth had its part in the development 
of society, but can not much longer be 
tolerated in government. It is amazing 
that it has continued so long. This 
huge democracy preaches an ominous 
gospel against it. The House of Lords 
in England, a branch of the Legisla- 
ture, owns collectively fifteen million 
acres of land, with a collective income 
of £15,000,000. Notwithstanding their 
wealth, many of them are place-hunters. 
They are clamorous for decorations, 
and dip heavily into the public ex- 
chequer. They persistently oppose 
every reform that will militate against 
their own class interests. No sane 
man would for a moment advocate a 
legislative chamber composed of enor- 
mously wealthy men, absorbing vast in- 
comes from land, and deriving great 
sums from pensions. Yet this is true 
in England still. Aristocracy of birth 
is dead. Like a withered bough, it 
hangs lifeless on the tree of human 



DEMOCRACY. 7 1 

government. No wonder that to-day 
the English democracy is shouting in 
thunder-tones to bishops and nobles, 
" Your established Church must be dis- 
established, your House of Lords ad- 
journed forever; pensions and overgrown 
salaries must be stricken from the roll 
of expenditures; the army, with its 
titled figure-heads of dukes and earls, 
must be disbanded ; even the crown it- 
self may rest upon the brow of a com- 
moner. This is the age of democracy." 
The identity of its ethical spirit with 
that of Christianity is unmistakable. It 
is accused commonly of being irrever- 
ent. It counts all men equal, none su- 
perior, and therefore reverences none. 
This charge fails to distinguish between 
reverence and some other words. Rev- 
erence is not reserve. Reserve is one of 
the growths of liberty. We do not 
speak to our neighbor; for, being our 
equal, he may regard it as an intrusion, 
and resent it. Democracy thus makes 
men shy of each other when they meet 



72 THE NEW GENERATION. 

as strangers. Political liberty sharpens 
social exclusiveness. Your servant's 
vote may be as good as your own, but 
the old Greek probably never forgot 
that one Athenian was worth ten 
Asiatics at Marathon, and would always 
discount political equality. Cromwell's 
Ironsides were the smallest political 
minority, and only Christianity could 
lead them to believe the other English- 
men were their equals. Equality has 
banished the claims of an inferior upon 
a superior for recognition, and the desert 
of courtesy has gone with it. This 
single element of reverence may be 
wanting. 

. But real reverence is more than this. 
It is respect for the authority of law, 
and gratitude for a beneficent service. 
These elements democracy can claim for 
itself. Kings and the money power, 
and the Church, have in all times 
trampled at pleasure upon law, and, in 
some awful moments, it must be con- 
fessed that the people have been im- 



DEMOCRACY. 73 

patient of authority. Like some giant 
in a fit of epilepsy, the convulsions of 
democracy have been painful, and even 
pitiful, to behold. But the long suffer- 
ing of the people under oppressive 
laws is proverbial. The commonest 
rights are often withheld from them 
year after year, with no result but a 
good-natured complaint. Rulers and 
laws are nowhere held more sacred than 
under forms of republican government. 
Here in the United States the President 
is treated w r ith respect by all parties. 
They honor the office. As a candidate, 
everything about him, even his private 
character, must stand the test of merci- 
less criticism ; but once elected, he is 
sovereign, and treated as such. Whether 
personally worthy or unworthy, his 
authority is respected. u Why should 
there not be a patient confidence in the 
ultimate justice of the people?" said 
Abraham Lincoln; and, after all, he 
voices the belief of this age of democ- 
racy, that there is as much virtue and 



74 THE NEW GENERATION. 

reverence in the plain governors of 
themselves, the people, and more than 
in autocrats, aristocrats, and plutocrats. 
Their gratitude for faithful public serv- 
ice is beyond question. They make 
their own political fortunes who serve 
the people well. Cromwell and Na- 
poleon, Gladstone and Lincoln and 
Grant, are terrible prophets ; but the 
people from whose ranks they sprang, 
and the commons who made them, will 
hold them in eternal honor. Like 
stars that shine in the canopy of all 
centuries, time can not dim their brill- 
iance ; they shall not wax old. No say- 
ing is more true than that of the 
quaint, homely War President: " You 
can fool some of the people all the 
time, all the people some of the time ; 
but you can not fool all of the people 
all of the time." They know their 
friends, estimate lovingly their service, 
and are grateful for it. If you serve 
them like Wilberforce, or Shaftesbury; 
if you go to them on errands of mercy, 



r 



DEMOCRACY. 75 

like Florence Nightingale or General 
Booth, your face will shine above the 
altar of their devotions like the image 
of a saint, and many a prayer will they 
offer and many a vigil will they keep 
for your safety and success. 

There is, beyond question, a world- 
drift for popular government. The 
socialism of Germany is only suppressed 
democracy. The constitutional king of 
Italy is the real voice of democracy 
raised against a government by a papal 
oligarchy. Nihilism is the loud pro- 
test of the Russian peasant against 
autocracy. The Belgium populace 
voiced their demand for suffrage by 
strikes, and the Chamber in a tremor of 
fever conceded it. The Brazilian de- 
mocracy has lately driven the last 
crowned head from the shores of the 
New World, and the new generation 
joined in the cheers which heralded this 
event around the world. The Sandwich 
Islanders have just deposed their queen. 
Thor shouts once more. The Japanese 



76 THE NEW GENERATION. 

constitutional monarchy has taken its 
place in the family of nations. The 
moral forces of democracy are leavening 
even that gray beard of the nations, 
China. The king is dead ! Long live 
the people ! 

It is novel as a fairy tale. There is 
an irresistible element of novelty in 
democracy. No one can read the story 
of Abraham Lincoln — how down before 
the pine-knot fire he obtained the rudi- 
ments of an education ; how from rail- 
splitter he came to be President and 
martyr — and not wonder. What a marvel 
that the boy Garfield should leap from 
the tow-path to the White House, or 
that Henry Wilson, from his shoemak- 
er's bench, should at last come to lead 
the Senate! No one can read the biog- 
raphies of the sons of the people, and 
not feel that here are illustrations of 
novelty which all the ages of despotism 
do not supply. The new generation is 
heir to the self-help and helpfulness 
which grows out of it all. 



DEMOCRACY. 77 

It is, we believe, the Spirit of God 
working upon the minds of men. Its 
words are not always the wisest; but its 
restless, convulsive energy is not alto- 
gether foolish. Valiant and victorious, 
it has stepped from the creeping cen- 
turies, and now looks out upon us every- 
where. It laughs at " divine right, " 
sneers at pretension, cries "Away with 
the pride of blood and place!" and in- 
scribes upon its banner, "Liberty of 
conscience, freedom of opportunity, 
equality before the law." Reform bills 
and education are its peaceful footsteps, 
revolutions are its mighty strides. It is 
hope and inspiration to the rising host. 
It is the work of God ; and let the world 
pray that, in the great day of its power, 
Christ, who inspired it, may be Sover- 
eign of the earth. 



V. 

The English Language. 



79 



"And the whole earth was of one language." 

— MOSES. 

" Parthians and Medes, and Elamites, and the 
dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Capa- 
docia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, 
in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, 
and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, 
Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in 
our tongues the wonderful works of God. And 
they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying 
one to another, What meaneth this ?" 

— ST. LUKE. 

" Till the war-note throbs no longer, and the 
battle-flags are furled 
In the parliment of man, the federation of the 

world." — TENNYSON. 

So 



u 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

NITY of language was the original 
birthright of the human race. 
Modern philology has as yet succeeded 
in explaining only what may be called 
the sub-modifications of human speech, 
and is confessedly unable to account 
for what appears to be its main di- 
visions into Semitic, Aryan, and Tura- 
nian tongues. An Assyrian tablet, the 
Chaldeans' legends, as well as Genesis, 
call attention to a confusion of tongues, 
and to a dispersion of races consequent 
upon it. The story of the Tower of 
Babel indicates that up to that time 
there was one race, speaking a common 
tongue, and interested in a common ob- 
ject. The language was common, and 
there was a unity of design. It is plain 
from the narrative, whether you follow 
Assyrian, Chaldean, or Hebrew outline, 
that there was concentration of effort 

6 81 



82 THE NEW GENERATION. 

upon a single project ; they were build- 
ing a great tower. Suddenly all this is 
changed. They lost their unity of lan- 
guage and purpose, and began to draw 
apart. Change of language caused 
separation, and separation hastened the 
change of speech. They interacted 
upon each other. Those who spoke 
cognate dialects drew together, and 
then drew apart from the rest. After 
the divine impulse was communicated 
for subdividing human speech, the tribes 
were left to develop their differences 
as they wandered farther and farther 
from the plains of Shinar. When once 
separation began, it would need only 
time to develop the conditions which 
actually exist. Greater divergence still 
must have occurred when they first 
fixed these new languages into perma- 
nent forms by drawing and writing. 

However occasioned, this unity of 
language was lost very early in the his- 
tory of the human race, and all thought- 
ful men must regard the confusion of 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 83 

tongues, and the consequent separation, 
as one of the greatest punishments 
that could be inflicted upon the race. 
Pride and insubordination nowhere have 
received a heavier doom. It was one 
of the earliest, and has been one of the 
most enduring penalties. Jehovah sent 
a Redeemer for the sinning pair of 
Eden, and forgave the Jews often for 
their idolatries ; but the curse of Babel 
still hangs like a dark cloud over the hu- 
man race to this hour. We have already 
alluded to mountain ranges as barriers 
to national comity, but men are able to 
climb them. Great rivers, with their 
rapid currents, interrupted exchange of 
thought and productions; but the great- 
est barrier of all is language. The 
gravest loss, except the loss of primal 
innocence in Eden, was that which the 
race sustained at Babel. Original sin 
tainted the whole life-current of the 
race, but next to it in its far-reaching 
and practical effects was the alienation 
caused by different languages. 



84 THE NEW GENERATION. 

How much the possibilities of con- 
versation contribute to human develop- 
ment, needs only mention to be allowed. 
The questions and answers of a com- 
panion give salutary interruption to 
the thoughts and feelings of another. 
The influence of these foreign words 
and outside thoughts supply new stand- 
points of observation, and from being 
simply a medium of communication, 
language has expanded into an inde- 
pendent organism over which we have 
no control, and to whose inherent na- 
ture we must accommodate ourselves. 
Speech may not have been necessary 
to thought formerly, but it is now. We 
are compelled to think in words. 
These helpful interrogations, and 
thoughts of others, and new standpoints 
of observation, were all lost through 
the dispersion from Babel. 

Again, the lack of a common lan- 
guage is a continual source of distrust 
and enmity. Difference of speech 
makes men strangers, and a stranger 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 85 

is easily regarded as an enemy. It 
makes deceit possible, and thus is the 
occasion of distrust. Wars grow out of 
it, and these render brute force supreme. 
It is much more difficult to adjust na- 
tional differences by arbitration when 
the rights which are involved must, in 
their settlement, follow the phrases 
and adjust themselves to the syllogisms 
of different languages. Its lack hinders 
charity and philanthropy, and renders 
religious evangelization much more slow 
and doubly difficult. One of the first 
operations of the Holy Spirit at Pente- 
cost was to give to every man the 
knowledge of the wonderful works of 
God in the tongue in which he was 
born. He was not compelled to wait 
for the slow acquirement of another 
language. Pentecost, with its three 
thousand conversions, the beginning of 
a new dispensation, thus indicates the 
mighty influence of men over men, if 
they can but speak together. 

The ultimate goal, therefore, of the 



86 THE NEW GENERATION. 

race, must be a common language ; or, 
if exception be taken to such a state- 
ment, let me say that the recovery of 
this lost heritage will, beyond expres- 
sion, further the progress of the race to 
a union in manners, law, and religion. 
Whatever tongue or speech can unite 
the divided, and gather together the 
dispersed, must be hailed as a signal 
blessing, and if any language can be 
shown to be truly cosmopolitan, it will 
point to a removal of the curse at 
Babel, be counted a benefit to humanity, 
and the work of God. It will be unique 
in that no other century furnishes such 
an exhibition. It has a right, therefore, 
to be counted as a weapon of power in 
the hands of the new generation. 

So much for an induction from the 
story of Babel. Here is a fact : You 
can travel around the planet to-day, 
and in every great city find an audience 
to hear you in the English language. 
English will serve you as a medium of 
communication anv where in civiliza- 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 87 

tion. Follow the lines of commerce, 
and you can travel the wide world 
through, using only English. The 
whole southern hemisphere is practi- 
cally given up to it. There the stately 
cities of Australia and New Zealand 
have become rivals of the European 
capitals. Australia is as strong as the 
United States when they became inde- 
pendent. All North America is Eng- 
lish. It is at least as influential as all 
other languages in Europe. In Asia it 
holds a good one-half. The Chinese 
and the Slavic, which divide with Eng- 
lish the influence of Asia, could, in 
justice, be allowed no more than one- 
half. But even in Asia the English 
holds the cities, the centers of power 
and civilization. It controls the press ; 
and English thought is presented 
through the press, even though alien 
languages are the channels of commu- 
nication. English holds the commercial 
avenues, controls the steamship lines 
and the railway systems of the world. 



8 8 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

Imagination is exhausted as we glance 
from the docks of London, past Liver- 
pool, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, 
Sydney, and Melbourne, and thence to 
the fabulous splendors of India and 
Burmah. The vast power of wealth is 
concentrated into the hands of English- 
speaking people. Possibilities of wealth 
beyond the dream of any enthusiast lie 
within the grasp of England in her in- 
exhaustible colonial possessions. 

English is now cosmopolitan as its 
origin. Englishmen and their language 
are the products of many races, many 
countries, and many centuries. Briton, 
Celt, Roman, Saxon, Dane, Norman, 
each contributed a fiber to the English- 
man's physical power, and an element 
to his language. When the blood of 
these great nations flowed into one, 
there sprang upon the stage of human 
action " Time's noblest offspring," speak- 
ing our mother tongue. The language 
of this cosmopolitan is as rich as the 
soft loam by the Tiber, where one of 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 89 

its roots grew ; free as the old Teuton 
in the forest fastnesses of Germany, 
from whom it had the love of liberty ; 
and it is as grand and rugged as the 
rocks and waterfalls of Scandinavia, 
from which one strong current flowed 
into it. There is a vein of gentleness 
in it as well, like the mist and the sun 
that cooled and dissolved out of pri- 
meval granite the fields of merry Eng- 
land. And this hardy island race, speak- 
ing this language, have streamed away 
to other lands, and now hold the fairest 
spots on earth, carrying everywhere 
their laws and religion, and stamping 
them upon rudimentary empires with a 
print as marked as the Roman. The 
old Norse sea-kings and the fair-skinned 
Celts renew their mighty youth in the 
South Continent, and grow into strong 
nations hardened by the suns of New 
Zealand and the frosts of Canada. The 
highest civilization on earth is his 
product, and it continues to absorb the 
best thought of all races. This hardy 



90 THE NEW GENERATION. 

race, which speaks the language which 
we learned in our cradles, thinks the 
thought and hopes the hope of human- 
ity. It takes the Kauri pine eight hun- 
dred years to grow. It took Rome seven 
hundred and fifty years to rear Augustus, 
her imperial genius. Is it boasting to 
say that England, "like a precious gem 
set in a silver sea," and America, "a 
queen whose rustling train skirts both 
sides of the Atlantic, " are daughters of 
a common stock ; that they speak the 
language and hold the sovereign voice 
in the coming fortunes of mankind ? 

The almost universal English tongue 
indicates a new epoch. One of the sig- 
nal preparations made for the advent of 
our Lord, and for the introduction of 
the gospel, was the practical universal- 
ity of the Greek tongue. The Greek 
thought was all-pervasive. Jesus 
preached a sermon to them, and it is 
still called the Gospel to the Greeks. 
To whatever great city — Philippi, Cor- 
inth, Antioch, and Rome — St. Paul 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 9 1 

might go on his missionary journeys, he 
would find an audience to hear him in 
Greek. The art, literature, and philos- 
ophy of the cultivated Roman were 
copied from the Greek models ; and, 
surely, it must be counted a far-reaching 
providence that opened the world to 
the first missionaries, provided only 
they could speak Greek. It is not folly, 
therefore, to interpret this preparation 
of the earth in modern times by the 
use of a common language as the work 
of the Holy Spirit, to smooth the way 
for the reception of the gospel. And it 
is not unfair to conclude that the re- 
ligion which English teaches may ex- 
pect to become the religion of the 
planet. It needs only great heralds 
to proclaim it. These the new gen- 
eration must supply or fail of its 
duty. 

Three great languages have borne a 
wonderful part in the plan of redemp- 
tion. The cross inscription was written 
in them. The first was Hebrew, the 



9 2 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

language of religion. It was the lan- 
guage of the Church from Abraham to 
the Captivity. In its stately forms the 
prophets spoke, and its literature and 
ethics, the purest of the ancient world, 
became the basis of Christianity. 

Greek, to which we have already al- 
luded, was the language of culture. 
The new Testament was written in it. 
Probably Christ could speak it. It fur- 
nished ready for modification a philos- 
ophy which the early Church readily 
adopted and transformed. It was the 
language of poetry, and oratory as well ; 
and it poured all these into the foun- 
tains of Christian learning, giving its 
eloquence to some, like that of the 
" golden-mouthed " Chrysostom, and its 
poetic fervor to those of contemplative 
mood, as the Bernards of Cluny and 
Clairvaux. The Greeks gave Christian- 
ity literary mold; but beyond question 
it owes its philosophical form and logic 
to them. The philosophy of the Acad- 
emy, the life taught in the Porch, and 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 93 

the logic of the Lyceum, still rule in 
the Christian world. 

Latin was the third language. It is 
called the language of power. " Po- 
testas" " be I him" "virum" " anna" 
11 castra" and " legio" are favorite words 
with it. It flung the mantle of its pro- 
tection over the cradle of Bethlehem, 
and stood guard at the sepulcher of 
Joseph. It was the language of invin- 
cible courage. Turn over the legionary 
where he had fallen in battle grasping 
spear and shield, and you would see 
there the face of a lion. The eagle 
was a fortress, where all who had a 
right to stand under it were safe. In 
many a difficulty, St. Paul protected 
himself by pleading his Roman citizen- 
ship. 

English . in the nineteenth century is 
what Hebrew was in the days of David 
and the prophets ; what Greek was in 
the age of Pericles ; what Latin was in 
the days of Augustus. It is the lan- 
guage of the prevailing religion. The 



94 THE NEW GENERATION. 

Anglo-Saxon stands related to the gos- 
pel and its ethical system, as the He- 
brew to the old covenant. We are the 
chosen people. We hold the gospel 
morality, hate vice, speak the truth, 
honor marriage and the home. We 
pass restrictive laws against opium and 
drunkenness. We love freedom and 
peace, and gave the world the greatest 
example of love, when the two great 
representatives of the Anglo-Saxon, 
England and America, sat down in ar- 
bitration at Geneva. 

But it is the Greek of the nineteenth 
century as well. It is the language of 
culture. Its poetry is the common 
property of the age. Chaucer, Spen- 
ser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, 
Browning, Tennyson, and Longfellow 
have ruled the poetry of the last five' 
centuries. In philosophy it has the 
names and systems of Copernicus, 
Bacon, Locke, and Hamilton ; and great 
Germans, like Lotze, who would influ- 
ence the thought of their age, must 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 95 

await a translation of their philosophy 
into English. The brilliant period of 
Spanish supremacy, before her star set 
at the end of the sixteenth century, is 
to-day being recorded in alien English ; 
and on the other side of the globe, in 
the Chinese civil service, special credit 
is given for English science. 

It is also the language of power. 
The hammer hand of the earth .is Eng- 
lish. The realm of physical force is 
dominated by her forts and fleet, flying 
two flags, the choicest which liberty 
bears in her hands about the earth. 
They ride victorious on every sea, and 
from whatever masthead they fly, or 
over whatever shores their shadows are 
cast, 

11 There you see the bow of promise bending 
in the crystal sky, 
On its glorious archway blazoned, Anglo- 
Saxon victory." 

It is the language of the Declaration 
of Independence, the language of the 
American Constitution, the language of 



96 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

the Emancipation Proclamation, and 
the language of the American common 
school. Armies, religion, and education 
control in every generation. English 
will dominate the globe. William III 
put on his banner in 1688, " A free Par- 
liament and the Protestant religion. " 
That banner is waving yet. Let the 
religion of the universal language re- 
main that of Protestant Christianity. 
Let its manners be simple, not those of 
courts, but those of free institutions ; its 
laws founded on the Decalogue, and on 
the Sermon on the Mount. 

It has two rivals — French, the lan- 
guage of European diplomacy and im- 
morality ; and Slavic, the tongue of the 
Greek Church and autocracy. We de- 
spise the unblushing greed and shame 
of the one, and hate the tyranny of the 
other. We are against both. We owe 
it to ourselves to sympathize with the 
Anglo-Saxon and his language in every 
zone, for he is for us and our Calvary. 

Surely this English is a weapon of 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. gj 

power formed for your use, not known 
in the worship of the ages on earth 
since Babel. Babel's curse, and its con- 
sequent dispersion, is overcome. Pente- 
cost, when every man heard the gospel 
in his own tongue, is come again. All 
men are neighbors, and speak the same 
language. Can the new generation rise 
to the tremendous responsibility which 
this providential event brings with it? 
It can, and will. 



A 



VI. 

Emigration to America. 

99 



" The United States is bounded on the north 
by the aurora borealis ; on the east, by the rising 
sun ; on the south, by the precession of the equi- 
noxes ; on the west, by the day of judgment." 

YANKEE SAILOR. 

" We come now, in the order of our narrative, 
to the happiest event in the political history of 
mankind — the adoption of the Constitution." 

— GEORGE BANCROFT. 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA. 

THE history of mankind might be 
called a history of emigrations. 
The cradle of the race was rocked in 
Asia; but it was soon forsaken, and one 
branch of that great family which 
parted on the Iranic plateau settled in 
Egypt. Egypt in turn established col- 
onies in Greece, Babylonia, and India. 
Phoenicia — a few coast cities — could 
hardly be called a country, and yet it 
founded numerous colonies, among them 
Carthage, for centuries the rival of 
Rome. The Greeks migrated in large 
numbers, as every student of history 
knows, and Rome was founded by emi- 
grants, some of them exiles on account 
of previous lawlessness. It was over- 
thrown by barbarian emigration also. 

There would seem nothing so ex- 
traordinary, therefore, about the tide of 
emigrants pouring into America annu- 

IOI 



102 THE NEW GENERATION, 

ally. Half a million came in 1891, 
among whom were thirty-six thousand 
Irish, sixty-five thousand Italians, 
eighty thousand Germans, and eighty- 
nine thousand Russians and Poles. 

Another plain teaching is even com- 
plimentary to these foreigners who 
crowd to our shores. Weak races never 
emigrate to any considerable distance. 
The Negroes never ventured beyond the 
place of their birth, except on some 
predatory excursion, and the effeminate 
Orientals of India are content to remain 
where their fathers dwelt. Only hardy 
races emigrate. All vigorous and intel- 
lectual races do move, when they can 
better their condition. It is the hardy 
stocks of the Celt, German, Slav, Scan- 
dinavian, and Chinamen that are in 
motion to-day. 

In spite of these considerations, the 
average American views with alarm the 
swarms of foreigners crowding hither- 
ward. So far as they are criminals, 
pardoned on condition that they come 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA. 103 

to America, he is perhaps justified. 
Many serious-minded citizens breathe a 
sigh of relief that the executive author- 
ities, fearful lest the cholera scourge 
should follow the lines of emigrant 
movement, have stopped all emigration 
for the present. Already the drift of 
public opinion seems to indicate that 
before this period shall pass, such con- 
gressional action will be taken as will 
permanently limit, if not altogether 
cause it to cease. Nations, like indi- 
viduals, have their periods of self-exam- 
ination ; times when they pause, take 
stock of themselves, consult their bear- 
ings; and if the observation shows that 
they are veering, return to their true 
course. Such a period seems just now 
to have come to the United States. Citi- 
zens have become thoughtful, and are 
pondering well the steps they are about 
to take. They have been wonderfully 
long-suffering, and the irritation pro- 
duced by the crowds of criminals and 
paupers, who have been " assisted " to 



104 THE NEW GENERATION. 

America, will not soon subside. Just 
now they seem not only thoughtful, but 
fearful as well. The chart in modern 
editions of the " Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire," in which Gibbon indi- 
cates the march of the barbarians upon 
Rome, is recalled, and we seem to have 
arranged a mind-map, in which Ger- 
mans, Italians, Scandinavians, and 
Chinamen are brigades, and all of them 
parts of a common line, about to make 
an assault upon the Republic. 

We shall do well to recall that emi- 
gration, though a single word, means 
two things. First, those movements, 
healthy in themselves, which serve to 
develop new regions, and have aided so 
much to build up the new Western Ter- 
ritories and the new South Continent 
Republics, within the memory of men of 
this generation. People of energy, who 
have made small accumulations of 
property, and seek an outlet for their 
industry and a larger field for its exer- 
cise, have a right to emigrate, and a 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA. 105 

right to a cordial welcome in any land 
to which they may turn their faces. 

Again, emigration means that men 
are compelled to go elsewhere by the 
conditions of life about them. There is 
no chance for improvement ; obstacles 
to any small advancement encircle them ; 
oppressive laws, restricted privileges, 
and caste prejudices and distinctions, 
bind them down to a dull routine and a 
hopeless existence, to which there is 
but one remedy — emigration. 

The first class of emigrants is cor- 
dially welcomed. It is the second class, 
half-fed, ill-clad, and with a suspicion 
of viciousness about them, therefore, to 
which the strongest objection is made. 
These two classes could point a moral 
in regard to the Irish question. Repre- 
sentatives of both of them are emigrat- 
ing from Ireland in fairly respectable 
numbers. Those supposedly desirable 
emigrants from that island go to Brit- 
ish colonial possessions, are cordially 
received, and in their new homes are 



106 THE NEW GENERATION. 

respected, love England, and detest the 
propositions embodied in the phrase 
Home Rule. Your other Irishman has 
suffered at home. He has endured 
poverty, and almost starvation. He 
has been evicted by landlords and pum- 
meled by constabulary until he has 
come to be openly at war with his sur- 
roundings; and what is more natural 
than that he should accept assistance 
to move to America? Naturally enough, 
also, when there he will not soon forget 
his old wrongs and the greed and injus- 
tice of his old rulers, and if he retains, 
through long years, a feeling hostile to 
the Fatherland, reasonably it can be laid 
to his former treatment under unjust 
laws. 

However, it is this second class who 
turn to America, and to them we are to 
continue to give or to refuse a welcome 
among us. But they, much more than 
the first class, deserve our sympathy, 
and much more need the comfort and 
encouragement of our wholesome laws. 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA, 1 07 

Unless we abandon the Sermon on the 
Mount, and follow the law of pure self- 
ishness, we shall regard their coming as 
a providence and a charge upon our 
benevolence. If we have not lost our 
deeper insight into spiritual things, we 
shall see that instead of trying to de- 
crease our home missionary efforts by 
decreasing the number w T ho need these 
efforts, they ought to be encouraged to 
come ; that they are strangers whom we 
are to welcome, and instruct, and elevate. 
God is sending them to our doors, and 
they come asking for our Protestant 
faith, and we can not say no. Instead of 
putting us to the expense of foreign 
evangelization, He is sending them 
within sound of our church-bells ; and 
if we turn them back or hinder their 
coming, let it be well known that per- 
haps thus we obstruct the purposes of 
the Almighty. 

There is still another reason for this 
emigration to the United States, aside 
from the injustice of the lands from 



1 08 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

which they come. America is the great- 
est moral influence in the world. Great 
Britain is the greatest political influ- 
ence ; but far-off nations have heard of 
our liberties and our hard-won privi- 
leges, and turn with eyes of longing to 
these shores. The Yankee sailor who 
bounded America was not so boastful as 
it would seem at first thought. Amer- 
ica, said he, is bounded on the north by 
the aurora borealis ; on the east, by the 
rising sun; on the south, by the preces- 
sion of the equinoxes; and on the west, 
by the day of judgment. The flashing 
aurora, the visible sign of the electrical 
energy which everywhere envelops the 
earth, is symbolic of the Holy Spirit all 
about us, under whose wonderful dis- 
pensation we live. Like the Scriptural 
symbol, the air, the irvev/jta, He presses 
to right and left, above and below. 
The precession of the equinoxes might 
well define the purposes of God, which 
hem us in ; and the races on the west, 
like Japan and China, which wait to be 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA. 109 

evangelized, are sure to rise up before 
us at the day of judgment. " On the 
east, by the rising sun ;" yes, it was the 
rising of the sun of liberty to millions 
of men in bondage to unjust laws and 
caste and unfair privilege, and when 
they saw the splendid Declaration and 
Constitution of the fathers, they shouted 
to each other and said: "The morning 
cometh, the day of our deliverance is 
at hand !" Lashed by injustice, and 
groaning under despotisms, they pray 
and plan and sacrifice, that their sons 
may reach liberty's land. Let them 
come. The patriots of the Revolution 
and of the war generation fought for 
the whole world. Events hung on the 
issue of those conflicts that were wider 
than the United States. We were then 
fighting the battles of the world, and it 
would, little become us now to deny to 
others the liberties our fathers won for 
us. The new generation must bid 
them hearty welcome to the lands and 
altars of America. 



1 1 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

Restrict them ? Yes. It is one thing 
to deny them admittance, it is quite 
another to make them citizens in six 
weeks. • Let them come and learn 
our American ways and customs ; let 
their children mingle with ours in the 
common schools — hope of our country, 
invaluable for their commonness. In 
twenty-one years they may become citi- 
zens. Keep out the criminals and the 
idlers and the dynamite anarchist class, 
but let the others in. 

But you say they will segregate them- 
selves ; they will remain little seg- 
ments of their own land on our soil, de- 
mand their own languages, bring with 
them their own Continental Sabbath, 
and their antipodal faith, and so imperil 
our American civilization. You mistake 
the results. Take the Germans as an 
example. They, perhaps, have been 
the most criticised in this regard. 
Deep down in your hearts you should 
rejoice that they keep fair and clear the 
memory of Fatherland. They will love 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA. 1 1 1 

the new hearthstone by and by just as 
tenderly. Intelligent Germans will not 
dispute that the German language here 
must pass into decay. It can not stand 
against our mother tongue. The pro- 
cess may be delayed and protracted by 
the arrival of new emigrants, but it will 
complete itself with the inexorableness 
of a law of nature. Efforts to keep it 
alive by teaching in it, preaching in it, 
and singing its songs, serve only to al- 
leviate the pain of the process, and 
render the transition easy. 

You are amazed, and tremble at the 
rapidity with which they come. Let 
that fact but stimulate you to greater 
endeavors to Americanize them. O 
Thor, see how God has trusted you ! 
" If riches are increased," so are they 
upon whom you should expend them. 
They come, lashed by injustice, and in- 
dignant with the cruelties and wrongs 
they have suffered. If you take them 
to your hearthstones, instruct them in 
the love and liberty you had from your 



1 1 2 THE NE W GENERA TIOJV. 

fathers, they will rise up to bless you 
in other days. If you reject them, they 
will, with some justice, say that the 
United States is a sham, and liberty a 
huge joke. The rapidity with which 
they come is the call of God to you to 
redouble your service to them and to 
him. 

Then there is nowhere else to go. 
Australia would receive them, but it is 
too far away. The distance and the 
expense makes it impossible to settle 
there. They have known, many of 
them, the intolerance of the papacy, 
and will not turn to the Spanish Amer- 
ican Republics. You would not wish 
them to go there were they willing. 
The struggle for liberty in Mexico has 
been so prolonged that they doubt 
whether it has been really won, and a 
royal family keeps them from Canada. 
This is their only refuge. 

No fortune, it is said, is transmitted 
undiminished to the third generation. 
It is quite natural. The first inheritor 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA. 113 

is born and brought up amid the activ- 
ities which created the fortune. If he 
does not increase it, he at least pre- 
serves it. The second is born in full 
possession of riches, most likely squan- 
ders it, and the third must begin the 
cycle afresh. Is this same thing true of 
the stores of wisdom and experience 
which generations accumulate? Some 
philosophers think so. Happily, wis- 
dom can not be so easily dissipated as 
money; but, on the other hand, neither 
can it be so fully and perfectly trans- 
mitted as an estate. It is all but im- 
possible that an age of invention and 
discovery can have an heir. Scientific 
truths, principles of social morality, and 
artistic institutions are passed on to 
others, and, in the passing, lose their 
freshness and their charm. They de- 
vitalize. At first they are like a worn 
coin, taken at its nominal value, though 
the figures are illegible, and by and by 
must be returned to the mint. 

The third heir must begin again, and 



1 1 4 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

who knows but this fourth generation 
in the history of the American Repub- 
lic fails to appreciate the liberties be- 
queathed by others to them, and must 
vitalize and remint the hardly worn 
principles of other days ? Are we not 
listlessly enjoying the banquet prepared 
by others ? Do we not, with coarse un- 
thankfulness, eat, and refuse even the 
crumbs to those under the table? Are 
we the noble sons of Ulysses, or are we 
the suitors who devour his substance, 
and talk about our prowess, though un- 
able to bend his bow? Let us summon 
our energies, and prepare ourselves by 
prayer for a moral crisis. If sacrifice 
or patient drudgery can bring again the 
brightness and luster which glistened 
upon the Declaration of Independence, 
let us pay the price, and revitalize the 
old political faith, so near akin to those 
eternal principles which, at last, shall fill 
the earth, "as the waters cover the sea." 
Out in New York harbor we have put 
up a statue of Liberty Enlightening the 



EMIGRATION TO AMERICA, 115 

World. There, to-day, she rears her 
sublime head. It is carved as a woman's 
face, and should therefore be tender 
and sympathetic. Let us see that her 
shield is stainless, and that no blood- 
spots come upon her, to keep her from 
flashing back the sun of heaven. Here 
let the oppressed from every nation 
find inviolable refuge and peace and 
hope again beneath her aegis, and let no 
son of despotism the round world over 
ever say, " O Liberty, thou wouldst not 
admit me to thy soil !" 



VII 

The Opening of China 



" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of 
Cathay." — Tennyson. 

"Benevolence is the distinguishing character- 
istic of man. As embodied in conduct, it may be 
called the path of duty." — mkncius. 

" Worship thy parents." — Confucius. 

" The history of China is a striking instance 
of down-grade in religion. The old classics of 
China, going back to the time of Abraham, show 
a wonderful knowledge of God. There are pas- 
sages in those classics about God worthy to stand 
side by side with kindred passages in the Old 
Testament. The fathers and founders of the 
Chinese race appear to have been monotheists. 
They believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and 
omnipresent God, the moral Governor of the 
world, and the impartial Judge of men." 

— OWEN. 
iiS 



THE OPENING OF CHINA. 

COINCIDENT with increasing com- 
munication, the growth of the 
press, the rising spirit of democracy, 
and the spread of the English language, 
is the opening of China and Japan and 
the civilization of Africa. 

It is one of the cosmopolitan won- 
ders that China, for centuries called the 
walled kingdom, has in our own day 
thrown open her gates, and invited the 
nations of the Occident to enter and 
teach and preach. 

There are two great events happen- 
ing in the lifetime of even the younger 
generation which served to open China 
to us. The first was the appointment 
of Anson Burlingame as minister to 
China in 1861, and the treaty which he 
afterward negotiated with the United 
States as plenipotentiary of China. By 

this treaty, China, for the first time, 

119 



120 THE NEW GENERATION, 

claimed the right and assumed the re- 
sponsibilities of a nation, according to 
the standards of international law. 
China thus became a member of the 
family of nations. 

The other event was the culmination 
of the Tae Ping rebellion. The Tae 
Pings, converts of Nestorian Christian- 
ity, taking the advantage of internal 
disafFections against the Tartar dynasty, 
made a rebellion, and established their 
capital at Nanking, in 1852. Teen 
Wang had himself crowned as' emperor, 
and was for a time everywhere victo- 
rious. His armies penetrated north to 
Tientsin, and east to Foochow. He 
was assisted for a time by the English, 
who made war against the reigning 
family on account of the Lorcha Arrow 
outrage. Teen Wang professed the vir- 
tues of Christianity, and despised the 
sins and idolatry of the reigning house. 
The surprising fact is*developed that, 
but for the hasty submission of the Tar- 
tars to England, a professed Christian, 



THE OPENING OF CHINA. 121 

though a revolutionist, must have come 
to the throne of China. General Gor- 
don, afterwards famous at Khartoom, 
then of the royal engineers stationed in 
China, assisted against the Tae Pings, 
organized the forces of the empire, and 
was the real genius and hero of the 
successful campaign which captured 
Nanking, and ended the reign of Teen 
Wang. 

These events constitute the introduc- 
tion of China to Western civilization. 
Both parties to this introduction were 
surprised. You who are familiar with 
the Western world know what this huge 
infant saw when his cradle ceased to 
rock, and he rubbed his eyes and looked 
about him. But his new Western ac- 
quaintances stared also. China has a 
vast territory reaching through thirty- 
eight degrees of latitude, and almost 
seventy of longitude, comprising five 
million five hundred thousand square 
miles — one-tenth pf the entire globe. 
It is divided into eighteen great can- 



1 2 2 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

tons, a single canton as large as two 
or three ordinary Western kingdoms. 
It is situated in the zone of produc- 
tive richness between the extremes 
of great cold and great heat. Two 
great rivers, with valleys like our 
own Mississippi Valley, and four hun- 
dred canals, one of them six hundred 
and fifty miles long, are the internal 
highways of this vast region. Its pop- 
ulation is variously estimated, and must 
be above four hundred millions — one- 
fourth of the race. It is so numerous 
that some are compelled to live their 
lives on boats, and is still increasing 
with great rapidity. It is a hardy stock, 
altogether different from the Orientals 
south or east of them. The same open 
door that let the nations in, let the 
Chinese out, and they have gone every- 
where on earth. The Chinaman lives 
under the equator like a Malay, and 
bears a snowstorm or zero weather like 
a Canadian or a Cossack. He has his 
quarters in every great city on the 



THE OPENING OF CHINA. I 23 

planet, and bids fair to become as cos- 
mopolitan as the Anglo-Saxon. 

The quality of his manhood and the 
fiber of his character may be suggested 
by an allusion to his history. Of all the 
nations that filled the great places in 
the ancient world, but two remain. 
The Hebrews, perhaps the oldest branch 
of the Semitic stock, go back to Abra- 
ham for their national founder, eighteen 
hundred years before Christ. Halfway 
between the call of Abraham and the 
final destruction of Jerusalem, the He- 
brew civilization culminated in the age 
of Solomon ; all after him was slow de- 
cline. Everything, even land and 
temple, has been torn from him since 
the capture of Jerusalem. He has re- 
maining only his name and his memory; 
but he still exists, an actual nationality 
in the world. Even that is more than 
remains of his ancient Egyptian or 
Assyrian rival. But here is China — the 
same old China of five millenniads. It 
had a civilization twelve hundred years 



124 THE NEW GENERATION. 

old at the time of the call of Abraham. 
Physically, the Chinaman is the equal 
of any man on the earth, and combines 
with it the ability to exist under con- 
ditions that awe the political econo- 
mists. He occupies, in our day, the 
same soil where, for one hundred and 
sixty generations, Chinamen have lived 
and died. From this soil great emi- 
grations poured out in the dim twilight 
of history, led by men like Tamerlane 
and Genghis Khan. They founded dy- 
nasties from ocean to ocean, and the 
fate of every other nation has not yet 
passed upon China. And now this 
"graybeard " of the nations has opened 
his gates to let in Western civiliza- 
tion, with its steam-engine, its railways, 
its telegraph and electric lights, its 
liberty and Christianity. 

Intellectually, the Chinaman is as 
striking as he is physically and histor- 
ically. He commits to memory hun- 
dreds of pages of Chinese poetry, and 
the writings of Confucius. Imagination 



THE OPENING OF CHINA. 1 25 

is probably wanting in him, and the 
fanciful speculations of the West have 
no charm for him ; neither does he 
tolerate easily the dreamy philosophiz- 
ing of his Southern neighbors. He 
comes slowly to his conclusions; but 
once reached, they are the same con- 
clusions that any logician would reach 
from the same premises. The logic of 
Aristotle and the logic of Confucius 
lead to the same conclusions. In in- 
vention he leads the world. The mar- 
iner's compass, gunpowder, and the art 
of printing are ancient things with 
him. And yet these left-handed an- 
cients stand with open arms to welcome 
our right-handed culture. It is the 
pillar of fire pointing the path of en- 
deavor to the new generation. 

The richest man on earth to-day is a 
Chinaman. His bank account is re- 
ported at $1,800,000,000 — an inconceiv- 
able sum. Fifty years ago, had China 
sunk out of sight in some great ocean, 
no nation would have missed her. The 



126 THE NEW GENERATION. 

world would have gone on as before. No 
laboratory would have lamented her lost 
science, no student have bewailed her 
philosophy, no sea have missed her 
sails. Like some cave-dweller, unmo- 
lested and unoffending, she lived within 
herself alone. Since that time China 
has become an important factor in the 
world's progress. Real world's progress 
is impossible without every nation's 
participation. Christianity can not be 
safe in Asia, or the world, with such a 
mass unleavened ; and it is a matter of 
the greatest congratulation to the sin- 
cere student of this closing century 
that China is accessible, and that the 
hermit of the ages has come to the 
door of his cave. China is soon to be 
one of the determining factors in the 
world's future. China holds the balance 
of power between the two great Asiatic 
nations, whose seats are respectively on 
the Baltic and the Thames. Fifty years 
ago no one counted on the Dragon. 
His flag w r as a nonentity ; to-day it 



THE OPENING OF CHINA. 1 27 

holds the balance of power in Asia ; to- 
morrow he will rival the swiftest and 
the mightiest. Give him practice in 
statecraft, and he will stand for more 
than a pawn on the political chess- 
board. 

Wonder of wonders, this China, the 
ancient of days, the fountain-head of 
nations and dynasties, the leader of in- 
ventions, rich, and with a mighty intel- 
lectual grasp, has opened his doors, and 
says, " Come in." Will any man in his 
senses deny that this is the direct inter- 
vention of God in the affairs of man ? 
Will any one deny that God has pulled 
down the barriers of his exclusiveness, 
that John Chinaman may have exit, 
and be taught, everywhere he goes, the 
language and religion which his em- 
peror is beginning to study at home ? 
God needs a new ^generation of men, 
true, sturdy, and patient, to meet this 
great emergency in the advancement of 
his kingdom. 

Christianity allies itself with the 



128 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

strongest races — with the races that 
have force and courage in their blood. 
A weak race debases Christianity, and 
can not stand up under the stern duties 
it will impose ; but win a strong one, 
and you make a fearless champion for 
Christianity. The last great race hold- 
ing out against the Cross is the Chinese. 
Your fathers failed to convert him. 
Win him, and you have the key to 
a hundred victories. He will imperil 
the success of all future civilizing pro- 
jects, unless soon made a friend. It 
was vital to the progress of mediaeval 
Christianity that it should win the 
Teuton ; nothing could stand against 
Trinitarian Christianity with the Teuton 
on its side. This race, like that, is a 
strategic one, and now the assault 
should be made. 

Two forms of religion hostile to 
Protestant Christianity are working 
their way eastward across Asia — Mo- 
hammedism on the southwest, the Greek 
Church on the northwest. Neither of 



THE OPENING OF CHINA. 1 29 

these will grant us the religious liberty 
which we must have, and which China 
now allows us. When Rome civilized 
the Gauls, she was building bulwarks 
for herself against the barbarians. It 
was Theodoric the Goth who saved 
her from the Huns. The converted 
Gauls won the day for Christianity 
against Mohammedanism at the battle 
of Tours. Had the Gauls not been con- 
verted, the followers of the Crescent 
would have triumphed. We shall build 
our own battlements in the same way 
again if we win the Chinese. They 
will be an impregnable rampart against 
the bigoted Greek Catholic and the 
fanatical Moslem. The Chinese are 
strong enough to stand like warriors on 
guard, and perform the stout duties of 
Christians. He is ready for Christian- 
ity, with its vigils, its fasts, and its 
solemn vows. Put the gospel into the 
hands of China, and you arm the strong- 
est ally and recruit the mightiest bat- 
talion for the armies of the Lord of 

9 



130 THE NEW GENERATION, 

hosts. You will see China become the 
very vanguard of the Church of God. 
She waits only for the gospel to make 
her the greatest of all peoples and the 
joy of the whole w 7 orld. 

We are now 7 standing before the open 
portals of another century. Before w y e 
enter them, let us give China the Bible, 
the Word of God, the secret of great- 
ness and permanence. Now, while this 
Chinaman is in the enthusiasm and 
faith of his modern youth, while he is 
yet tender to impressions and plastic to 
a master hand, he must be molded for 
gospel truth and righteousness. " The 
nineteenth century is the century of the 
Anglo-Saxon ; the twentieth century is 
the century of the Slav," said Macaulay. 
He should have said, the twentieth cen- 
tury is the century of the Chinaman. 
Unless wise interpreters of current 
events are mistaken, the Chinaman and 
the Anglo-Saxon w r ill hold it together, 
or fight for its supremacy. 



VIII. 

The Opening of Japan 



But most of earth, is still from thee concealed 
Until that period of futurity, 
When all the globe contains shall be revealed. 
Pass not unmarked the islands in that sea, 
Where nature claims the most celebrity ; 
Half hidden, stretching in a lengthened line, 
In front of China, which its guide shall be, 
Japan abounds in mines of silver fine, 
And shall enlightened be by holy faith divine." 

— CAMOENS. 

" For mankind is one in spirit, and an instinct 
bears along 

Round the earth's electric circle the swift blush 
of right and wrong. 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Human- 
ity's vast frame 

Through its ocean -sundered fibers feels the 
gush of joy or shame ; 

In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have 
equal claim." — loweli,. 

" We therefore hereby declare that we shall, in 
the twenty-third year of Meiji, establish a Par- 
liament." — MUTS-HITO (MIKADO.) 

132 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN: 

THE same providence is manifest ev- 
erywhere in the universe. Some- 
times it is suggested by a ray of light 
from a star, which, after flashing on its 
way for fifty years, arrives on the planet 
just in time to light a struggling sailor 4 
to a plank in safety. The coincidence 
of a drowning seaman, a floating plank, 
and a ray of light, suggests that God is 
still governing the world. 

In the year 1851, six hundred miles 
from the coasts of the outlying islands 
of Japan, a few Japanese sailors, their 
vessel a wreck, were drifting helplessly 
in the ocean. An American ship picked 
them up, and brought them to San 
Francisco in safety. Daniel Webster, 
then Secretary of State, saw in these 
rescued seamen the opportunity for 
an expedition to Japan. Out of this 
grew the world-famous voyage and em- 

133 



134 THE NEW GENERATION. 

bassy of Commodore Perry, who, forty 
years ago, without the firing of a gun, 
or the shedding of one drop of blood, 
and leaving no ill-feeling behind, opened 
the gates of Japan, which had been 
barred against all commerce since the 
days of Philip II. Daniel Webster 
spent his life mainly in the Senate, and 
in opposition. But few opportunities to 
• display his executive power were ever 
given him. This is one notable in- 
stance, and it is one of the greatest 
achievements of his life, and a signal 
annal in the history of our Republic. 
Who can but regard it as a providence, 
that a man of his sagacity should be 
Secretary of State at that critical hour; 
that he should make a quick induction 
from drifting sailors and a closed king- 
dom, and set in motion the forces that 
would unseal to civilization this her- 
mit nation? If a ray of light, a plank, 
and a struggling saifor may suggest a 
beneficent Ruler, how much more a 
drifting crew, a masterful State Secre- 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 1 35 

tary, and the opening of the Sunrise 
Kingdom ! 

Isolation was never the policy of old 
Japan. An extensive Japanese com- 
merce was carried on by both Spain 
and Portugal after the middle of the 
sixteenth century, and the Dutch never 
entirely abandoned their trade with 
Japan after the year sixteen hundred. 
It was not in the nature of the Japa- 
nese to be Ishmaelites, with their hand 
against the world, and the world's hand 
against them. Their adventurous spirit 
early drove them from their island 
home, and previous to the introduction 
of Romanism, they treated shipwrecked 
foreigners humanely, and easily assented 
to proposals for mutual trade. 

The Roman Catholic priests are 
mainly responsible for the exclusive 
policy. The first Jesuit missionaries, 
Xavier among them, possessed purity of 
character and talents of a high order, 
and within twenty years of their arrival, 
three hundred thousand Japanese were 



136 THE NEW GENERATION. 

converted to Christianity. The spirit- 
ual and temporal fertility of the soil at- 
tracted swarms of friars of every sect. 
Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits 
jostled each other, and became rivals in 
securing advancement for their respect- 
ive orders. Their domineering beha- 
vior, their claims to miraculous pow- 
ers, and the doctrine that allegiance 
was owed by Christian converts to a 
sovereign pontiff reigning in Rome, 
naturally aroused the jealousy of the 
Japanese rulers. These causes, and the 
conspiracy formed by them against the 
Shogun, led to a bloody persecution. 
And yet it was not Christianity to which 
the Japanese objected, and for which 
they persecuted the Christians, but on 
account of political meddling. It was 
political interference, so serious that the 
very existence of the State was threat- 
ened by it, to which the Shogunal 
powers objected. The expulsion of all 
foreigners was the result. The policy 
of isolation was entered upon, and 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 1 37 

Japan has hated Rome ever since. 
Hatred of Romanists by the Japanese 
was so well understood, that Colbert, 
the great finance minister of Louis XIV, 
recommended to his sovereign that only 
Protestants should be sent upon the 
French embassy to Japan. 

Perry went to Japan in 1853. His 
stately fleet was an object-lesson of pe- 
culiar force to a people to whom war 
was the noblest vocation, and among 
whom military powers were esteemed 
the highest. This show of naval power 
to an insular people, themselves sea- 
men, was most impressive. If this im- 
pression was partly false, at least it as- 
sisted greatly to accomplish the object 
of Perry's voyage. He succeeded in 
opening the country by treaty to foreign 
trade and intercourse, and Western 
learning, science, and the Protestant re- 
ligion began to affect, for the first time, 
the national life of Japan. 

The country, after the departure of 
Commodore Perry, was at once thrown 



1 3 8 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

into conflicts and debates on the ques- 
tion of foreign intercourse. This led 
the Japanese to investigate for them- 
selves the points in which Western 
civilization was superior to their own. 
They could not resist arguments applied 
in the form of powerful ships of war, 
knowledge of military and naval science, 
useful articles of manufacture, and the 
superior intelligence shown in the West 
in regard to geography, astronomy, 
navigation, and medicine. They sent 
young men abroad to be educated in 
Occidental science, and, on their return, 
responsible positions in the Government 
were open to them, and they thus ac- 
quired a superior formative influence. 

" The older order changeth, yielding 
place to new," but men are loath to 
quicken their pace and keep step with 
the march of events. A rebellion, led 
by the Tycoon, followed the abridg- 
ment of his privileges enjoyed for cen- 
turies. The Mikado was successful 
against him, and in 1868 the Shogunate 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 1 39 

was entirely abolished. The progress- 
ive elements have been in control ever 
since. Converted to the belief in the 
superiority of Western civilization, the 
Imperial Government pursued with the 
greatest energy the policy of its intro- 
duction. The years of reconstruction 
have not been free from serious mis- 
takes, irrational attempts, and useless 
experiments ; but what nation or ruler 
can boast of immunity from errors of 
one kind or another? In the words of 
an American journalist, " It is too little 
to say that, during the last dozen years, 
Japan has made more history for itself 
than in the preceding two centuries and 
a half of its annals. It has exhibited 
transformations, the like of which have 
required ages to accomplish in any 
other land." 

In 1868 the first audience was given 
in Japan to foreign representatives by 
the Mikado. Since then Japanese lega- 
tions have been established in the 
United States, England, Germany, 



140 THE NEW GENERATION. 

France, Austria, Russia, and China. 
How wonderfully rapid has been their 
progress in Western ideas ! Feudalism 
has been abolished by the voluntary re- 
linquishment of the fiefs held by the 
Daimios, the feudal lords ; common 
schools have been established. They 
have built railways, established steam- 
ship lines, erected lighthouses along the 
coasts of the four thousand islands 
which constitute the Empire ; organized 
an army; bought and built a navy; 
liberally endowed institutions of learn- 
ing and benevolence ; revised their old 
laws and codified new ones ; reformed 
the coinage ; abolished old barbarities ; 
adopted the Gregorian calendar in 
1872 ; and in 1875 the present Mikado 
crowned it all by promulgating a decree 
pledging a constitutional form of gov- 
ernment. 

What a spectacle for the race, when, 
in 1889, this constitution went into 
effect ! Men of all lands wondered at 
it, and it was a tremendous gain for 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 141 

democracy all around the world. The 
Mikado who thus yielded to the influ- 
ence of the age, was the sovereign of 
the oldest line ruling on earth. He is 
the one hundred and twenty-third mon- 
arch of a line that goes back before the 
destruction of the Hebrew temple. 
The usually accepted date of Jimmu 
Tenno is 660 B. C, so that it was no 
vain boast when the present Mikado, in 
the opening sentences of his proclama- 
tion, alludes to a family dynasty reach- 
ing over twenty-five hundred years. 
Yet this sovereign promulgated a con- 
stitution, and put limitations upon the 
despotic power which one hundred and 
twenty-two ancestors before him had 
enjoyed, and obeys to-day the mandate 
of the people. 

Self-government could have no fairer 
field to put itself to the proof than in 
Japan. The Japanese mind delights in 
politics. 

It is possible that representative gov- 
ernment is established there more in 



142 THE NEW GENERATION. 

form than in fact. The Parliamentary 
history thus far would justify the con- 
clusion. Men do not easily learn self- 
control, and it is as difficult to teach it 
to nations. So far, however, as the first 
election shows, it would seem that a 
slow extension of the sufirage, and a 
gradual appreciation of the power 
vested in the ballot, will render the new 
liberties of Japan as safe as our own. 
The first election was held on July i, 
18S9. It was naturally a day of the 
greatest interest and excitement, and 
ye: everything passed off quietly and 
with the gravest decorum. There were 
at least three candidates for election in 
every district, and in some places from 
twelve to fifteen. The American desire 
for office seems to have been at last 
communicated to the people of this 
kingdom. The qualification of the 
voter, in addition to his age, is the pay- 
ment annually of fifteen dollars taxes ; 
ninety-four per cent of all the voters in 
the Empire cast their ballots. The ma- 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 1 43 

jority of the electorate declared for a 
liberal and progressive policy. The 
first speaker of the Imperial Diet, Naka- 
shima Nobuyoki, a man of large polit- 
ical experience, is a member of the 
Presbyterian Church, and an active 
Christian. Shimadi Saburo, the poli- 
tician of next greatest influence, is also 
a Christian, and editor and author of a 
remarkable historical volume containing 
the narrative of the opening of the 
country. Like our own Government, 
the Japanese has three departments — 
executive, legislative, and judicial. They 
have a supreme court, seven courts of 
appeal, and ninety-nine courts of first 
instance. What a strange heathenism ! 
Next to politics, the Japanese mind 
delights itself in industrial activity. 
They have completed already over two 
thousand miles of railway. Great elec- 
tric lights hang all over the great cities, 
and even illuminate the imperial palace. 
Thirty-six mills have been built for 
spinning cotton-yarn, with almost four 



144 THE NEW GENERATION. 

hundred thousand spindles. There are 
fifteen daily papers in Tokio. The 
Buddhist faith circulates twelve great 
journals, besides over three hundred 
minor periodicals. The Japanese have 
invented an almost smokeless powder. 
They have themselves built a navy of 
thirty-two steel vessels, and manned 
thern exclusively with natives. They 
have fifteen new steel men-of-war now 
building in England. There are only 
six foreigners in the Japanese military 
service, and their standing army of over 
two hundred thousand men, is drilled 
to perfection. 

An easy comparison might be insti- 
tuted between Japan and England. 
Japan herself is the England of the 
Pacific. Like Britain, the Japanese 
islands are set like gems in the silver 
sea. They are contiguous to a great 
continent, in which Japan is destined 
to exert the same influence that Eng- 
land exerts on Europe. The daily 
papers credit Japan with the intent to 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 1 45 

obtain possession of the Hawaiian 
Islands. So that the Island Empire of 
the Occident has already this rival in 
the land of the rising sun. 

What a strange heathenism is this ! 
They practice our own surgery and 
medicine. They translate our books of 
philosophy, and read them by thou- 
sands. Evidences of Christianity are 
more read there than here. They have 
the common school, the printing-press, 
the electric telegraph. It would be 
surpassing strange if old standards of 
public morality were not altered by 
Western ideas ; if, along with Western 
inventions, there did not come new con- 
ceptions of individuality and responsi- 
bility. This is already true beyond any 
definite facts which might be quoted 
to justify the statement. Take, for 
example, the rescript of the Mikado, 
inculcating moral duties. While in 
America we are debating the propriety 
of what we call legislation on moral 

questions, this heathen emperor has is- 

10 



146 THE NEW GENERATION; 

sued a decree warning his people that 
the only progress worth making is moral 
progress, and into twenty lines has com- 
pressed the fundamental moralities of a 
Christian civilization. The minister of 
home affairs has done what no Western 
politician would dare to do. He issued 
a letter of instruction to the Buddhist 
priests, in which, among other things, 
he rebukes them for their " disgraceful 
struggle for wordly honors and profits. " 
There is no heathendom on earth so 
strange as this. 

The struggle of religions in Japan 
constitutes a veritable epic period. 
Great leaders, skilled counselors in a 
world all their own, are there concerned 
in the progress of events which are 
worthy to be recounted in the oratory 
and poetry of the future. To begin with, 
there are one hundred and ninety-three 
thousand Shinto temples ; seventy-two 
thousand Buddhist temples, each with 
groups of priests and attendants. There 
are ninety-two Christian churches in 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN, 1 47 

Tokio alone, and two hundred and fifty 
thousand nominal Christians in Japan. 
Shintoist and Buddhist are allied to the 
old civilization. They are allies of the 
Tycoon, and believe in the old policy of 
isolation. Christianity is allied with 
the new order of things. Here, as 
everywhere else, it holds the future. 
The conflict is not along the line of 
doctrinal development, but rather in the 
direction of a moral reformation. In 
1889 there were 340,445 marriages, and 
107,478 divorces. They license prosti- 
tution. The first business of Christian- 
ity there is to reform the national and 
individual character. It must teach 
temperance, Sabbath-keeping, the stern 
commandments of the Old Testament 
law, and purify the home. It must 
abolish concubinism, and lessen divorce. 
The very idea of a Christian home 
must first be transplanted on Asiatic 
soil, and all that is worth having of 
civilizing influence must wait its growth. 
In spite of its hard ethics, Christian- 



148 THE NEW GENERATION. 

ity can easily win in Japan. In the 
year 1605 it was estimated that 1,800,- 
000 Japanese had embraced Romanism. 
So well had the Jesuit missionaries done 
their work that the nation was about to 
swing on its rusty hinges from one 
system of religion to another. But 
Rome's grasping priesthood overreached 
itself, lost all that had been won, and the 
nation once more swung back to its 
ancestral faith. Now, on the boundary 
of a new century, the religious thought 
of Japan is once more in a state of 
suspension. This time the gates of 
its soul-kingdom must swing outward. 
Thor's mighty shoulders must push 
them open to the Christian faith. They 
hate Romanism, but they welcome 
Protestantism. Men of scanty college 
education can not satisfy the better 
educated Japanese mind ; neither can 
men of small spiritual experience guide 
the more consecrated converts. It is a 
field for men of the ripest training, the 
sternest integrity, and for those who re- 



THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 1 49 

new their consecration to the living 
Christ every hour. Paul, Bertha, and 
St. Patrick have no richer laurels than 
those which await the men of the new 
generation sufficient for these things. 

Already eminent Japanese are urging 
the adoption of Christianity on econom- 
ical and political grounds. For purely 
ethical reasons Christianity is accept- 
able to the Japanese. Dr. Gracey says : 
" Japan is ripe for the Christian re- 
ligion as no other nation is on the 
globe, and it is possible Japan may be- 
come Christian by a royal decree in a 
single day." Certain it is that Chris- 
tianity is honeycombing the land, pre- 
sides over its Parliaments, is reforming 
its morals, and has everywhere in the 
Sunrise Kingdom the widest hearing. 
There may be a tone of general irrita- 
tion shown by the killing, by outlaws, 
of several missionaries, notably the 
murder of the Rev. Mr. Burge ; but it 
is as much due to the rice famine as to 
opposition to Christianity. It is the 



1 50 THE NE W GENERA T/OA\ 

last growl of a decrepit giant, who sits 
grinning in his cave, unable to harm 
those that pass. 

Who can measure the wide reach of 
the rule of God? He rules where he is 
not recognized, and undergirds where 
he is not known. Japan is open ; the 
last barrier is broken down. In Japan 
the press, democracy, and the English 
language and liberty have culminated 
in the creation of a civilized nation. In 
our own day God has brought about 
this strange aw T akening, and he who in 
his own good time shall have all do- 
minion, has laid upon us the responsi- 
bility of its spiritual conquest. The 
pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of 
fire by night, 110 more clearly pointed 
the path of journey to the wandering 
Hebrews, than does this strange open- 
ing of Japan point the path of duty to 
the Christian world. 



IX. 

The Civilization of Africa 



11 Cush shall soon stretch out her hands unto 

God." — ISAIAH. 

" Back then, complainer, loathe thy life no more, 
Nor deem thyself upon a foreign shore, 
Because the rocks thy nearer prospect close." 

— KEBLE. 

" He holds no parley with unmanly fears ; 
Where duty bids, he confidently steers, 
Faces a thousand dangers at her call, 
And, trusting in his God, surmounts them all." 

— COWPER. 

" Where Afric's sunny fountains 
Roll down their golden sand, 
From many an ancient river, 
From many a palmy plain, 
They call us to deliver 

Their land from error's chain." 

— HEBER. 
152 



THE CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. 

WE have seen how China and Japan, 
populous nations, with homes es- 
tablished, and possessing in their terri- 
tories important resources for the de- 
velopment of the world, have opened 
their gates to Western civilization. The 
opening of Africa is a manifest provi- 
dence for the same catalogue. The 
wonder about Africa is that the Occi- 
dent has allowed it to exist so long in 
its crude barbarism. While the pro- 
gressive Oriental nations invite us in, 
the interior of that great continent, 
comprising the gloomy valleys of the 
Nile, Niger, Zambezi, and Congo, and 
the shores of the five great African 
lakes, swarm with fierce tribes of sav- 
ages, that beat back commercial and 
missionary enterprises. They are broken 
remnants of nations, isolated, exercising 

153 



154 THE NEW GENERATION. 

no influence, controlling no resources, 
and, in many cases, fast dying out. 
Their total extinction would not affect 
the world ; its material development 
would go on unhindered without them, 
and its spiritual progress would suffer 
no loss. They are the lowest grade of 
humanity, their religious sense is al- 
most a blank, and from one standpoint 
their evangelization is unimportant. 

The movement, then, for the open- 
ing up, civilizing, and salvation of 
Africa seems like the direct influence of 
the Holy Spirit upon the heart of the 
race. It is cosmopolitan as our age, 
as England, America, Germany, Portu- 
gal, France, and Belgium are all con- 
cerned in it. It is beneficent, as there 
alone slavery remains to curse the earth, 
and this conquest will remove it. How 
pitiful in comparison does its ancient 
wonder of the pyramids seem to this 
occupation of the last unoccupied land 
on the globe, and the rearing there of 
mighty Christian nations! 



THE CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. 1 55 

Africa is interesting to the historian ; 
for along the banks of her mighty Nile 
the first great civilization of the world 
was built. Fifty generations before the 
Phoenicians crept cautiously about the 
shores of the Mediterranean, and five 
thousand years before DeSoto swept 
down the Mississippi, the Nile bore 
upon its bosom the builders of the 
pyramids, and for centuries this highly 
developed civilization resisted the as- 
saults of all comers. 

It is interesting to the Hebrew, for in 
that land the chosen people of the old 
covenant served as slaves. There Moses, 
their great lawgiver, was born ; from 
thence Jehovah led them with a 
" stretched out arm," gleaming before 
them with the pillar of cloud by day, 
and the pillar of fire by night. From 
Egypt they carried the false notions of 
religion, which reappeared in their fre- 
quent lapses into idolatry. 

It is of especial interest to the Chris- 
tian, for it was Africa that offered the 



156 THE NEW GENERATION. 

Son of God protection and safety when 
all other refuge was denied to him. 

In all historic times the vast interior 
of Africa has been the raiding country 
for slavery. Old Egypt only extended 
to the first cataract. From there to the 
Cape Colony it is twenty-three hundred 
miles as the crow flies. From Aden to 
the west coast it is twenty-three hun- 
dred miles, and, if you make all proper 
deductions, there are five million square 
miles of territory in new Africa. Out 
from under the equator the Nile flows 
north, bearing upon its banks the glory 
of the twenty-six great ancient dynas- 
ties, and the proud structures of the 
Ptolemies. Out from under the equator 
the Congo is flowing, and, by every law 
of human judgment, should bear upon 
its bosom and along its banks nations as 
vast. There are no more new worlds; 
but in Africa one-half of the old hemi- 
sphere remains to be subdued for the 
uses of mankind. 

The mission spirit is now concen- 



THE CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. 1 57 

trated upon Africa as it has not been 
since the days of Cyprian and Augus- 
tine. From the fifth century to the 
middle of the nineteenth it has been 
unexplored. Only the barest outlines 
of the continent were known. How all 
this is changed ! Maps of ten years 
ago are obsolete now. Pause and think 
of the New Congo Free State ; think of 
the broad belts of land in its great in- 
terior unexplored, whose lakes, moun- 
tains, and rivers are now known ; recall 
the discoveries of Speke, Baker, and 
Schweinfurth ; the missionary journeys 
of Moffat and Livingstone, and the long 
marches of Stanley through the silent 
forests ; follow William Taylor in his 
walks from mission station to mission 
station ; reflect how the Church has in- 
terested herself in the suppression of 
the slave-trade and the African rum- 
traffic. The painful, desolate wail of 
Mackay, who gave fourteen years of his 
life to service in Uganda, and died at 
the age of thirty-nine, has sent a thrill 



158 THE NEW GENERATION. 

through the Church. The blood of 
Bishop Hannington is crying from the 
ground, and has come up before the 
throne. The conviction is growing 
that the world is to be saved or poisoned 
as a whole, and Christendom is begin- 
ning to feel that the black paganism of 
Africa is threatening the universal vic- 
tory. They are now determined to 
Christianize it. Raise the cross, and all 
things harmful fade away. All the 
precious fruits and flowers of human 
life flourish beneath its outstretched 
arms. The noblest minds and most 
heroic souls of the modern faith have 
offered themselves to set it up in Africa, 
and the accomplishment of this purpose 
the Holy Spirit has laid like a burden 
upon the hearts of men. 

The gateways of every continent are 
the great rivers. Up these civilization 
must push. The equatorial lands of 
Africa are the most valuable on the 
globe ; but the condition of elevation 
which renders them healthful and fer- 



THE CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. 1 59 

tile, makes them difficult of approach. 
Stanley dissected and laid bare the 
heart of this inland plateau. He says 
that it consists of the elevated basins 
of four great rivers and five great lakes. 
To reach the ocean these rivers must 
descend somewhere by a series of rapids, 
through gorges in the surrounding moun- 
tains. The rapids of the Congo reach 
to the very mouth of the great estuary 
into which it flows. The insuperable 
difficulties of approach to equatorial 
Africa will appear if you will compare in 
your mind the ease with which you may 
float into equatorial South America by 
means of the Orinoco and the Amazon. 
These physical difficulties render Africa 
self-centered and secluded, and must be 
overcome. A vast population may 
thrive in the interior, but are now shut 
out from foreign trade and intercourse. 
The opposition of the natives must be 
overcome. The Nile must be cleared 
of Mohammedan fanatics, and from 
Alexandria to the Albert Nyanza the 



1 60 THE NEW G EN ERA TION. 

flags of Christian countries must float. 
It is too late to plead sentiment in be- 
half of ignorant Mahdists, warlike 
Umyamyembe and Kaffirs, or lean, ugly 
Hottentots. A railroad is now in pro- 
cess of construction that will open up 
the Congo for sixteen hundred miles, 
and railway portages could easily be 
built about the Nile cataracts. 

The material resources of the great 
interior make its subjugation a commer- 
cial enterprise. Except the coast country 
it is fertile, healthful, possessed of all 
the metals, and there Stanley found the 
greatest rubber forests known to men. 
Its mines and the products of the lake 
countries will add much to the perma- 
nent wealth of the world. The Eng- 
lish gold-piece of larger circulation, the 
guinea, derived its name from the great 
western gulf which washes its shores. 

The scientific interests impel to a 
thorough knowledge of Africa. What 
the desire to discover the philosopher's 
stone has done for chemistry, the desire 



THE CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. l6l 

to discover the source of the Nile has 
done in Africa. But besides the wish 
to see the spring from which the Nile 
flows, there are other motives equally 
strong. Treasures wait for the botanist 
and the geologist at every step. If 
there are any proofs for the suggestions 
of the evolutionists, they will be found 
there. The Dwarf races, in every way 
dissimilar from the Esquimaux, invite 
attention. Evidence for or against the 
descent of the five great races from a 
common stock are to be sought in Africa. 
The moral motives are apparent. 
Some think it advisable to withdraw 
from these inferior tribes, and concen- 
trate all our efforts upon populous na- 
tions, that constitute a power and have a 
future. Against this suggestion we have, 
first, the Divine behest, " Go ye into 
all the world, and preach the gospel to 
every creature." Again, we should joy- 
fully recognize the power of Christian 
love. Love to God and to men is the 

life of the Church. This love begets 

ii 



1 62 THE NEW GENERATION. 

missionaries to the very lowest. If the 
spirit of love shall cease to raise men 
up, and thus stop activity among them, 
it would prove something wanting in 
the Christianity of our da}'. A jewel 
would fall from its crown. And, once 
more, God has promised to pour out his 
Spirit " upon all flesh." Prudence re- 
quires that we watch for this Divine 
quickening, and a watch-tower, at least, 
with a chamber for prayer upon its roof, 
should be built in the midst of every 
pagan tribe. If you discontinue mis- 
sionary efforts, you give the future of 
Africa to the Arab and the Moslem faith. 
Mohammedanism is winning its way 
among them. It has the advantage of 
a certain simplicity. It prescribes a 
round of duties, frequent ablutions and 
prayers, and pilgrimages to a certain 
tomb. It puts itself upon social equal- 
ity by marrying with them. It allows 
polygamy. These two concessions to 
savagery count for more than any actual 
duties that accompany their religious 



THE CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. 1 63 

system. Love, truth, and integrity of 
character, the Christian virtues, are not 
easily taught to races that live in hovels, 
and have no instinct to build for per- 
petuity. 

Two things now exist in Africa to 
the shame of Christendom. The first 
of these is slavery. That no man can 
be a slave to his brother is true the 
round world over, save in Africa. There 
the Arab slaver is desolating whole 
States to enrich his purse. Great gangs 
of slaves are continually marched from 
the interior, and the skeletons of those 
who die in the march line every path- 
way from the interior. u Slaves can 
not breathe in England, " and we, who 
purchased the freedom of our own 
black race by the blood of fathers and 
brethren, owe it to ourselves to wage a 
war of extermination upon the Arab 
slave-trade of Africa. 

The second cause of shame is the 
rum-traffic. A native African chief de- 
fined Christianity as the " barter of rum 



1 64 THE NEW GENERATION. 

for ivory and slaves." There can be no 
doubt that the large shipments of rum 
to Africa are destroying by thousands 
the native races, and enfeebling and de- 
teriorating those who remain. It is 
one grave charge that American Chris- 
tians make against the Senate of the 
United States, that it delayed for a year 
to join in the treaty of the seventeen 
nations for the suppression of the Afri- 
can slave-trade and rum-traffic. 

But if I have mentioned two things 
to the shame of humanity, I may also 
be permitted to mention two things to 
its glory. The first of these is the he- 
roic qualities that belong to some of 
the native Africans. Whether you fol- 
low the black faces that carried Living- 
stone his last mile, or read the sacri- 
fices of some of the Liberian emigrants, 
or look into the eyes of the men who 
pushed with Stanley down the Congo, 
you recognize there the same elements 
of manhood and heroism that fill the 
libraries of the world. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA. 1 65 

And what shall I say of the heroic 
men who have made their lives a con- 
tinual sacrifice for the dark continent ? 
What a glorious gallery of immortals 
the world can show of those " who 
counted not their lives dear unto them " 
for the good of Africa, — Moffat, whose 
daughter sleeps on the edge of a name- 
less South African jungle ; Livingstone, 
whose body lies in Westminster Abbey, 
but whose spirit haunts the great conti- 
nent to which he gave his life ; Han- 
nington, whose brave death for the faith 
proves that the age of martyrs is not 
yet gone by ; Gordon, on the stairway 
at Khartoom ; Pocock, in the rapids 
above Stanley Pool ; and Stanley, who, 
if he still lives, it is only because God 
has yet a great victory to be won by his 
arm. See him as he stands upon the 
shore of that great, far-flowing inland 
river. What river is it ? It was the 
interrogation of centuries. Livingstone, 
Baker, and Schweinfurth had seen it ; 
but none had ever traced it to the sea. 



1 6 6 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

The Arab slave-trader refused to go 
farther, but Stanley said, " I will go 
on." And so he pushed bravely on and 
down. When he came out on the west 
coast, the interest in African explora- 
tion, which had been dead for fifteen 
centuries, revived, and one of its great 
interrogations was answered. There is 
stern stuff in men still. The man who, 
when Tippoo-Tib turned back, " floated 
out into the unknown," may well fill 
the place of honor in the gallery of 
African heroes. 



X. 

Missions. 



"All martyrs and noble men and gods are of 
one grand host ; immeasurable ; marching ever 
forward since the beginning of the world ; the 
enormous, all-conquering, flame- crowned host, 
noble every soldier in it, sacred and alone noble. 
Let him w T ho is not of it hide himself; let him 
tremble for himself. Stars at every button can 
not make him noble ; sheaves of Bath-garters, 
nor bushels of Georges, nor any other contriv- 
ance; but manfully enlisting in it, valiantly taking 
step and place in it. O heavens ! will he not be- 
think himself, he is so needed in the host?" 

— cariaxe. 

" Out of the shadows of night, 
The world rolls into light, 
It is daybreak everywhere." 

— I,ONGFEU,OW. 

"Alpha et Omega, magnus Deus, 

Heli, Heli, Deus meus." 

— HILDEBERT. 
168 



MISSIONS. 

WE come in the order of our speci- 
fication to the last of these prod- 
igies which manifest the leadership of 
God in our own times. There is a sense 
in which all that has gone before con- 
verges here. Intercommunication, the 
press, democracy, and the spread of 
English, all focus in missions. Foreign 
missions were first practically organized 
in the nineteenth century, the first 
that can properly call itself Christian. 
The contributions to missions from 1800 
to 1840 were two and one-half times 
as much as all that had previously 
been given in America for foreign evan- 
gelization. From 1840 to i860, half 
the time, the amount increased in the 
geometric ratio of two and one-half. 
But even with this increase practically 

maintained for another twenty years 

169 



170 THE NEW GENERATION. 

the impression is left upon the sincere 
student that the Church has done little 
more than play at missions. Every 
standpoint we have taken in the pre- 
ceding discussion points to the possi- 
bility and necessity of enlarged mis- 
sionary enterprises. 

But missions have also a distinct sug- 
gestion, containing in itself the marks 
and portents of a peculiar command 
from the skies. Let us explain the 
mission movement in this way. 

Scarcely any subject requires more 
delicate handling than the present in- 
fluence and status of Christianity. In 
questions of this sort there are sure to 
be two parties ; one who will actively 
exaggerate its influence, and another 
who will passively undervalue its past 
achievements and present power. The 
differences are in part subjective, but 
each party will find facts in the history 
of comparative religions to justify its po- 
sition. History, when summoned to the 
witness-stand, will prove almost any- 



MISSIONS. 171 

thing. You can believe, with Hegel, 
that all is an unfolding; or with Schlegel, 
that all is retrogression; or with Ecclesi- 
astes, that " the thing that is shall be;" 
and from the volume of accredited his- 
tory you can marshal an array of facts 
to prove your philosophy true. Whether 
you believe that what we call Christian 
civilization is stationary, progressive, or 
in decline, you will be able to substan- 
tiate your position from some chapters 
in the history of Christianity. 

We shall all never be able to agree 
as to the general indirect and involun- 
tary influence which Christianity exerts. 
Like the solid in a chemical reaction, 
which by its mere presence affects the 
crystallization of a fluid, we allow Chris- 
tianity such an indirect influence. But 
just as the chemists will variously esti- 
timate the power of this crystallizing 
force, so this general and indirect factor 
must be allowed to go undetermined. 

But there are, in addition, certain 
definite and direct forces in current 



172 THE NEW GENERATION. 

Christianity for which we may hope to 
find a standard of measurement. 

Christian history for the first five 
centuries is a determinate, of which the 
doctrinal statements which are held to 
the present hour, and the conversion of 
the Latin races, are the expression. 
The next ten centuries give us some- 
thing just as definite. Somewhere in 
those ten centuries the Teuton was con- 
verted. That was its great victory. It 
will not be too much to say that since 
the early days of our faith it was its 
greatest triumph, for when the Teuton 
yielded, and put his stanch shoulders 
under the cross potentially, the Anglo- 
Saxon, the easy master of our own age, 
was won. 

Since that time no new laurel has 
been won commeasurable with the con- 
version of the Latin or the Teuton. 
There has been, no doubt, a strengthen- 
ing of position. Much has occurred 
which will properly fill the pages of 
the historian. Great alternatives have 



MISSIONS. 173 

been offered and great decisions made, 
but no event so promising for Chris- 
tianity as those will greet the candid 
eye since then. The Sandwich Island- 
ers have been converted ; so have the 
Fijis. India is ripe for the harvest, and 
is rapidly being garnered, but is bread- 
tree fruit at the best. It may be doubted 
whether any of them will be able to 
stand up under the stern orders which 
Christianity will issue. The event of 
such another race conversion still waits. 
The missionary movement holds a 
promise of it. It ought to be able soon 
to accomplish it. Once more the Church 
of God is moving for great victories. 
"Go ve into all the world " has been a 
w T hisper for centuries. It is now thun- 
dered upon the heart of the Church as 
never before. It makes one's heart leap 
high with hope to see the mission-tide 
rise in every Church. Creed discussions 
and denominational differences have 
scarcely delayed it. The modern hosts 
look for the world's conquest, and cry, 



1 7 4 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

like Nelson's order at Trafalgar, " Eng- 
land expects every man to do his 
duty." 

The science of medicine has won its 
control over diseases of all climates ; 
the doors of the nations are open ; 
women have been organized for work 
which only they can do; intercommuni- 
cation has reduced distances so that the 
terrors of extradition and the sacrifices 
of isolation are reduced to a minimum ; 
young men and women, the sons and 
daughters of the noblest in the land, 
recruited from the ranks of the colleges 
and the young people's societies, have 
offered themselves by thousands for for- 
eign work. These providential indica- 
tions have met a generous response in 
the enlarged gifts of the Church, which 
only needs faithful prayer and teaching 
to multiply tenfold. It is in the prom- 
ises that the world is to be converted, 
and we believe in estimating honestly 
the forces gathering for its accomplish- 
ment, that nothing can long stay it. 



MISSIONS. 175 

This new generation should see it ac- 
complished. 

Let me indicate, first, briefly the direc- 
tions whence the victory may be ex- 
pected. 

1. A great race conversion, such as 
either already mentioned, may occur. 

2. A rival religious system like Bud- 
dhism or Mohammedanism may become 
so weakened as rapidly to disintegrate. 

3. But beyond either of these there 
may be expected a marked deepening 
of the religious life of the nominally 
Christian world. 

Any one of these, as the result of 
missionary effort, w T ill make an epoch ; 
and when the possibility of all of them 
being realized is considered, the leader- 
ship of the Holy Spirit will become ap- 
parent, and none will dare doubt that 
the mission movement is the work of 
God, and not the work of man. 

It requires only a brief survey of the 
world to convince the reader that there 
remain only two races whose conversion 



176 THE NEW GENERATION. 

could be ranked in importance with that 
of the Latin and the Teuton. The first 
is the Jew, the second the Chinese. 

The Jew is fair ground for a victory 
of the most overwhelming proportions. 
He has no country, but he does have 
his hand upon the business interests of 
the world. The financial power of the 
despised Hebrew makes w T ar or peace on 
the Continent of Europe. Though dis- 
possessed of his ancestral inheritance, 
the Jew retains his original identity. 
The characteristics of his physiognomy 
distinguish him far less than do his 
qualities of mind, and the stubborn per- 
sistence w 7 ith which he has rejected 
Messiah, and clung to the matchless 
Deity Jehovah, represented by that un- 
syllabled, four-lettered name which 
Moses received at the burning bush, 
and which was so long unpronounced 
as to have become absolutely lost. 

One of the cardinal features of the 
Jew T ish faith, which we hold in common, 
is the unity of God. It is easy to see 



MISSIONS. 177 

that had the Arian symbol of the Son 
been adopted at Nicaea, one great ob- 
stacle to his conversion would, have 
been removed. But now, with the 
larger charity of our times, and with 
the candid admission that, after all, the 
Trinity is an incomprehensible mystery, 
it is not too much to hope that the 
Athanasian symbol will yet win its way 
with him. Large numbers of the Jews 
of Europe and America are Unitarian 
Christians, w 7 ho at least have ceased to 
affirm that Christ was an impostor. 
Thirty-five hundred of them are re- 
ported to have organized themselves 
recently in New York City, into the 
Synagogue of Christ. In large num- 
bers they are now undergoing conversion 
to the Greek Church in Russia. This 
conversion is perhaps a matter of policy, 
and almost compulsory, like the baptism 
of some of Charlemagne's legions. The 
devout may well question its desirabil- 
ity under such circumstances, but that 

he will surrender his faith rather than 

12 



1 78 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

leave Russia, shows that the hold of 
his old religion upon him has notice- 
ably declined. 

The Chinese will not be the subject 
of such immediate expectancy. But 
the interest of the Christian world cen- 
ters upon him. The Chinese is the 
oldest, the most numerous, the most 
virile of existing unconverted people. 
He possesses a country so extended, 
and a civilization so complicated, that 
were he really won, it would be the be- 
ginning of the end. There is no ques- 
tion that Japan would follow. Like- 
wise, the conversion of Japan and its 
introduction to Christendom, more ex- 
pected, would hasten the conversion 
of China. China and Japan have al- 
ways more or less influenced each other. 
A Chinese legend makes one Sin Fu 
the founder of the Japanese Empire, 
and no less an authority than Friedrich 
Von Schlegel seems to indorse the state- 
ment. Should Japan become Christian- 
ized, it would quicken the missionary 



MISSIONS. 179 

impulse and would capture the out- 
works of the older and stronger Chinese 
civilization. But China will not yield 
without a long struggle. How impor- 
tant, then, that Chinamen by thousands 
have come to America, and how foolish 
does the action of our great Govern- 
ment seem in the light of recent con- 
gressional legislation ! Every city, and 
almost every town, has an opportunity 
to assist in the education and moral en- 
lightenment of the Chinese. In many 
places this opportunity has been used 
to its utmost. A single Chinese school 
in a comparatively small Eastern town 
has taught English to over fifty of these 
Chinamen, fifteen of whom have been 
converted, and joined the Christian 
Church. They yield readily to Chris- 
tian influences. The enterprise and viril- 
ity of the Chinese who come to Amer- 
ica, and their influence at home, through 
regular financial support, make the 
conversion of a Chinaman here worth 
two converts at the other side of the 



l8o THE NEW GENERATION. 

world. So that any law which restricts 
their coming is doubly unjust to the 
Christian Church, and every Chinaman 
who gains admission to America simpli- 
fies by so much the greatest Christian 
problem of the new century — the con- 
version of China. 

Christianity is not compelled simply 
to repeat former victories. It is face to 
face with other religious systems, and 
could it master any one of them, it 
would have a conquest to its credit 
worthy to be catalogued with the proud- 
est triumphs of the faith. Christianity 
has already overwhelmed national re- 
ligions, like Druidism in Gaul and 
Britain, or like Judaism ; but these victo- 
ries are paralleled by Buddhism over 
Brahmanism, or Mohammedanism over 
the Persian faith. Buddhism, Moham- 
medanism, and Christianity, each may 
justly claim to be catholic religions. 
Each aspires to become a universal faith, 
and could the Cross win against either, 
it would be a pledge of speedy triumph, 



MISSIONS. I8l 

and would make the age of missions 
illustrious. It would make our own 
generation one of the fairest in the 
records of eternity. 

Buddhism already begins to show 
signs of a rout. It must be confessed 
that the decline of Buddhism dates be- 
fore the beginning of modern Christian 
missions. Paralysis had fallen upon it, 
and decay was working at its heart ; 
but Christianity has hastened its decay 
as nothing else could. It can not en- 
dure the contrast with Christianity. 
Buddhism teaches absorption finally 
into the Infinite, and assures men that, 
after almost endless soul transmigra- 
tions, they w r ill at last reach up to God. 
But comparing this to Christianity, with 
its teaching of an incarnate Son, who 
came down to eatth to lift men up to 
God, and who suffered upon the cross 
for a world's redemption, how much 
it suffers by the contrast ! There is 
a veritable break-up of Buddhism in 
Japan. Dr. Abel Stevens, the historian 



1 8 2 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

of Methodism, five years ago preached, 
through an interpreter, in a Buddhist 
temple in Tokio, to twenty-five hundred 
Japanese, while the priest of Buddha, in 
gloomy silence, surveyed the scene. 
One glance at the black hulls of Perry's 
fleet conveyed to the Japanese the im- 
pression of a great military power, and 
that impression has never been wholly 
dissipated. The Japanese Buddhists 
admire a strong faith which inculcates 
with such beautiful metaphors the mili- 
tary virtues. One look at a genuine 
Christian life will produce the same re- 
ligious impression that the white sails 
of Perry's fleet made nationally. If our 
Christian life, which, as we have before 
observed, takes men of stern fiber to 
bear its cross, could be lived by any 
large number under the observation of 
Buddhists, it would win them by its 
very sternness. 

We are meeting Mohammedanism in 
earnest now. Moslems hold Egypt and 
the Nile Valley, divide India with us, 



MISSIONS. 183 

and have outstripped our faith in reach- 
ing Persia, North Central Asia, and 
Afghanistan. They meet us on those 
frontiers from which we are turned 
back, with their babbled creed, such a 
strange commixture of truth and false- 
hood, " There is no God but God, and 
Mohammed is his prophet." 

Christianity and Mohammedanism 
have their resemblances and differences. 
It has more in common with Christianity 
than any other false faith. Arabs, in 
common, claim descent from Abraham, 
pretend to honor the law of Moses, and 
admit Christ as a prophet to their ranks. 
Islam is the foe of idolatry, and main- 
tains the unity of the Godhead against 
polytheism. Mohammedans are uni- 
tarian, and Christianity is trinitarian. 
Their system teaches the sheerest fatal- 
ism, while Christianity follows free will. 
Its ethical duties are easily inculcated. 
It teaches prayers five times a day, cer- 
tain washings and fasts, and yet leaves its 
followers free to follow passions and in- 



1 84 THE NEW GENERATION. 

clinations accounted the most vicious 
by Christians. Its very likeness to 
Christianity has been its secret of re- 
sistance. The Mussulman claims that 
his faith embraces all that is worth re- 
taining in the religion of Christ, and in 
everything else is an advance on it. 

Thus far the territory of Islam is al- 
most untouched by Christian missions. 
It is less than ten years since the first 
Christian mission was established at 
Aden, and the evangelization of Arabia 
attempted. And yet this is the very 
center of Islamism. It has seldom been 
beheld by Christian eyes, save when 
in the guise of a Mussulman. Thither 
come the annual pilgrimages to the 
birthplace and tomb of the prophet at 
Medina and Mecca. These pilgrimages 
are occasions of the greatest religious 
fervor, and there is promise of no such 
Christian harvest on earth as may be 
gathered there. That lone missionary in 
Arabia should be re-enforced by a hun- 
dred others, and the tired pilgrims to 



MISSIONS. I85 

the tomb of a dead prophet should be 
pointed to the resurrection glory that 
hangs above Joseph's tomb in Calvary, 
and to a living Christ. 

But a sterner course than evangeli- 
zation must be used with Islamism. 
They deserve, and they should receive, 
no quarter from the Christian world. As 
in the rise of Islam, the prophet's follow- 
ers gave the choice of Koran or sword, 
in turn its devotees should be coerced by 
Christian nations into the fundamental 
moralities and decencies upon which 
international society is now based. It 
is easily done. Palsy has already set 
in. Turkey is a rotten husk, and but 
for the desire of several European 
powers to possess Constantinople, the 
Turk would long ago have been lashed 
out of Europe. France holds Algiers 
and neighboring North Africa. Eng- 
land holds Egypt ; and the short gap 
between the English and the Germans 
in Central Africa could be closed in 
three months. India is in the hands of 



1 8 6 THE NE IV GENERA TION. 

the English. The Sermon on the Mount 
must wait, so far as Mohammedanism is 
concerned, until the way is cleared by 
English and French men-of-war, and the 
ignorant Mahdists recognize the virtues 
of the hundred-ton guns manufactured 
by Herr Krupp. 

However, a result of the mission 
movement, more worthy of the new 
generation, more worth an estimate, and 
more immediately desirable than either 
of these, would be the marked deepening 
of the religious experience and life of the 
nominally Christian world. When the 
Hebrews and Chinamen are nominally 
converted; when Buddhist and Moham- 
medan have been put to shame, there 
will still remain to be accomplished, 
the round world over, the work which 
must be done in nominally Christian 
countries ; namely, making nominal 
Christians real ones. 

How to make nominality reality will 
then become the greatest problem be- 
fore the Church of God. It is now. 



MISSIONS. 187 

The nominal conversion of the world is 
practically reduced to a money ques- 
tion. The Church can have the world 
nominally in any five decades when it is 
willing to pay for it. It is true that 
" the course of events is apt to show 
itself humorously careless of the repu- 
tation of prophets ;" but one may dis- 
cern the signs of the times, and mark 
the shadows of coming events. It is 
not mere speculation to anticipate the 
nominal conversion of the Christian 
world. 

But while Christianity is lengthening 
her cords to include the world under 
her canopy, she must strengthen her 
stakes at home in order to support the 
extension. These supports are a deep- 
ened piety, integrity of character, and 
a consecration that is renewed every 
hour. A counterpoise to world-wide 
extension must be entire surrender of 
the individual heart to the will of God. 
The Church must ascend into the un- 
frequented paths of Christian expe- 



1 8 8 THE NE W GENERA TlON. 

rience, and, by a living union with her 
Lord, make veritable the promise, "The 
works that I do shall ye do' also, and 
greater works than these." 

Bishop Foster sets forth the motives 
to a higher Christian life in the follow- 
ing words: " Never since the beginning, 
we believe, was there a more interest- 
ing, a more important period, than the 
present moment. Contemplated in any 
aspect, it is pregnant and portentous ; 
a grand culminating point is undoubt- 
edly approximating; never, therefore, 
did the Christian Church need to be so 
wide awake, so much alive as now. 
Like a majestic vessel, riding into har- 
bor under the pressure of a fierce storm 
and a full sail, the world seems nearing 
the port of destiny ; she needs now, if 
ever, experienced and adroit hands to 
bring her sa'ely and speedily to the moor- 
ings. The great harvest is ripe, waving 
with world-wide expanse. Sturdy reapers 
are wanted. The materials are at hand, 
and the temple is rising out of the midst 



MISSIONS. 189 

of them — builders are in demand. The 
Church is not ready to meet the demand 
of the times ; and her want is in a vital 
point. It is radical — at the heart. Not 
that she is more deficient than formerly. 
This we do not believe. The Church 
of the present, compared with the 
Church in former centuries, even in her 
palmiest periods, makes men's hearts 
leap high within them. Her light, her 
missionary zeal, her soundness in the 
faith, her enlightened enterprise, her 
real piety, all fill us with hope. But, 
after all, there is a want growing out 
of the present crisis — a want which 
nothing outward can supply — which 
Bible societies, missionary phalanxes, 
universities, and even a martyr's de- 
votion and zeal, will not make up. It is 
the want of that higher life which the 
Church may have — nay, which she must 
have, before the consummation of her 
mission; that deep and entire conse- 
cration of her means, that yielding up 
of her whole heart, that quenchless 



190 THE NEW GENERATION. 

love, that unabating concentric and uni- 
versal effort for the salvation of souls, 
that abandon of self, that recognition 
of the doctrine of stewardship, which 
will lead us to life for God and the race." 

No one can read these words and not 
feel that the author has plainly pointed 
out the greatest need of the Christian 
Church, and that it stands intimately 
related to the dearest interests of Christ's 
kingdom. Missions have emphasized it 
as nothing else could, and showed its 
duty as well as the correlative question 
of privilege. At home and abroad, the 
superior blessings which follow Chris- 
tianity are being realized. 

Just as organic germs cease a few 
miles out at sea, unable to maintain 
themselves in the pure salt air, so the 
men who give themselves to the foreign 
work learn most quickly in the crucible 
of loneliness and discouragements that 
every passion and caprice and ambition, 
every u bleating sheep and lowing ox," 
must be utterly slain before they can 



M/SSIOJVS. 191 

succeed. High motives prompt most 
men to enter the mission-work. They 
go forth inexperienced, but sanguine, 
exuberant with hope. They know the 
virtue of self-renunciation in a measure, 
and in their nobler moments they are 
prepared to sacrifice their lives for His 
" sake and the gospel's. M But they 
find the divine religion of Christ so in- 
vested with human wrappage, so hedged 
about with sacramentalism, sacerdotal- 
ism, and sectarianism, so hampered by 
worldliness at home and abroad, that it is 
small wonder if they lose their first en- 
thusiasm, and if the " dew " of their 
" youth " becomes soiled with the com- 
plaints and repinings and hardships of 
their isolated life. Prayer becomes a 
duty; the heart, instead of turning up- 
ward to God, turns in and preys upon 
itself, and any kindling joy, or sweet 
refreshing from the Lord, is made the 
subject of morbid analysis. Thus many 
of them, in sheer despair of other re- 
lief, have been driven to the " secret 



1 9 2 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

place of the Most High/' Their Mas- 
ter meets them as he met Peter outside 
the gates of Rome, and tells them that 
he is o^oin^ to be crucified a^ain. Thev 
come under the blood once more, and 
they are crucified with Christ. At the 
cross they find freshness of faith and 
hope and charity. Internal commotions 
subside, devout affections grow in in- 
tensity, and their seemingly hard lives 
take on the radiance of the transfigur- 
ation, and the power of the resurrec- 
tion. 

It would be strange if this expe- 
rience was not reflected in the Church 
at home. These same men come home 
with their stories of success and failure. 
How often, as they stand wasted and 
worn before our luxurious home con- 
gregations, the arrow of conviction 
strikes home, that they failed because 
we did not pray for them nor sacrifice 
ourselves with them. They bear the 
scars of wounds that our prayers or 
faith or generosity would have spared 



MISSIOA r S. 193 

them. They went out from the same 
halls of learning with us, and from the 
enchantments of the same Christian so- 
ciety. They spent their years of youth 
and hope in public bazaars and private 
hovels in India and China ; camped 
among cannibals; ate and slept amid 
the smoke and vermin of a Zulu kraal, 
and dwelt safely, though tremblingly, 
in the habitations of cruelty and in the 
abodes of lust. They have risked 
health and contracted even leprosy, for 
the gospel's sake. Others are going 
out equal to these, if not equal to 
themselves, for all find times of exhaust- 
ing depression. And while they have 
gone, lifting the doors of paganism off 
their hinges, we live ignorant of their 
work and sufferings. These thoughts 
have moved many to a study of mis- 
sions, and more to self-examination and 
to self-denial. The Church has grown 
high-souled as to the dishonor of mis- 
sionary debts, and the determination is 
growing that as much sacrifice is re- 

13 



194 THE NEW GENERATION. 

quired on the part of those who give as 
they must make who go. 

This yearning for a deeper Christian 
experience is testified to in many -other 
ways. A new emphasis is being put 
upon character and integrity. Experi- 
ence ought to be emphasized, but re- 
ligion must henceforth make men up% 
right. It must be able to refute the 
charge which a Hindoo made against a 
missionary, "Your book is better than 
your life." The Salvation Army, the 
Epworth League, the Christian En- 
deavor Society, the King's Daughters, 
and the White Cross movement, are all 
an outgrowth of this yearning and de- 
termination to attain to a more elevated 
plane of Christian living. 

So are the debates concerning amuse- 
ments. All questions of life and con- 
duct in hours of leisure pale into noth- 
ingness alongside of the great truth 
that men are dying about us by gener- 
ations ; that we hold the imperial keys 



MISSIONS. 195 

to the kingdom of heaven, and by our 
lives — epistles known and read of all 
men — we open heaven or bar its gates 
against them. While we laugh and 
make merry and dissipate our religious 
energies, they are moving up the rain- 
bow path to heaven, or to the galleries 
of despair. God has nobler designs 
upon us and upon our social natures. 
We have a divine lineage. The hu- 
man pedigree reaches back to God, and 
this consciousness of our relation has 
brought the determination to be worthy 
of it. And so the young men and 
women of the Church by thousands 
have separated themselves to higher 
things. 

Mrs. Hemans came one day upon an 
eagle by a river's brink, with the film 
creeping over his eyes, and drooping 
pinions. She knew he was the bird of 
the mountains ; that those filming eyes 
were made to peer straight into the 
sun, and those mighty wings to wrestle 



196 THE NEW GENERATION. 

with the storm and tempest, and so she 
wrote : 

" Eagle, this is not thy sphere ; 
Warrior bird, what dost thou here? 
Why, beside the river's brink, 
Do thy drooping pinions sink?" 

That was no attitude for the king of 
birds ; and I hail it as one of the por- 
tents for a wider conquest and victory 
for the Church, that multitudes are 
seeking a higher life, and refuse to 
spend their days idly dozing on beds of 
ease, or with dwarfing energies by riv- 
ers of pleasure. They have covenanted 
with their souls for the long ascent of 
the mountains where He dwelleth, that, 
after prayer and beholding the face of 
the invisible God, they may return be- 
dewed and bejeweled, like Moses, to 
burn idols and punish their worshipers, 
or, like some mighty archangel, to 
glitter in the earthly train of the All- 
conquering King. 



XI. 

Method and Agents. 



" I go the way of all the earth : be thou strong, 
therefore, and show thyself a man ; and keep the 
charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, 
to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and 
his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is writ- 
ten in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper 
in all that thou doest and whithersoever thou 
turnest thyself." — david. 

" God has committed to us a great trust ; he 
has given us a great power ; he has put the mil- 
lions into our hands to be molded and fashioned ; 
he has given us the key-position in the crisis 
hour ; he has made us the heart of the host — the 
hand of the right arm. America will determine 
the future of the world. From her will emanate 
the deciding factors. We ought to be chief among 
the determining factors of America. It is not 
possible for others to deprive us of that position 
if we do not prove ourselves unworthy to hold it. 
The winners will be the workers ! Methodists of 
America ! I would not inspire you with the spirit 
of unholy rivalry, or stir you up with desire, or 
ambition of ascendency or leadership ; but in the 
name of your Lord, I exhort you, emulate all ; if 
you may, transcend all in the magnificent service 
you render humanity in the crucial time of its 
struggle. Let your voice be heard, loud and 
clear, ringing over the field in the thickest of the 
fight, and let your standard be seen steady and 
moving at the head of the advancing column. 
Let humanity learn to look for your colors, and to 
know that where they fly are truth and victory !" 

— bishop FOSTER. 

198 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 

THE recent advances in medical 
science have resulted from a de- 
termination on the part of physicians 
to co-operate with nature. This is now 
a cardinal principle. Counter-irritants 
may still be a good thing in certain 
cases ; but the old method of fighting 
fire with fire, and making the patient's 
body the field of the conflict, is no 
longer followed. The modern phy- 
sician's aim is to weaken the forces 
operating against nature, and thus re- 
enforce her. The remedies he pre- 
scribes are to allay certain abnormal 
conditions, and relieve nature of her 
handicap. Thus relieved, nature can 
be trusted to accomplish her own cure. 
Systematic theology is progressing by 
the same method. It first repudiated 
all theories inconsistent with the God- 
given impulses of the human heart, 

199 



2 OO THE XE II r GEXERA TIOX. 

and then conformed itself to the com- 
mon teachings of integrity and of love. 
It attempted to give these practical ap- 
plication. It was thus turned toward 
temperance, philanthropy, and moral 
goodness, and in seeking to advance 
these has been led to a truer estimate 
of Jesus, his atoning blood, and his in- 
finite love. 

This indicates also the method by 
which the great purposes of God, so 
plainly taught in the school of events, 
are to be accomplished. The new gen- 
eration must co-operate with God ; fol- 
low the leadership of the Holy Spirit 
as indicated by opportunities, resources, 
and direct commands. Some of the 
resources and opportunities have been 
indicated in the preceding chapters. 
The direct commands have all been 
given, and are written down in the 
Word of God. The greatest of them 
all Christ gave at Bethany in the hour 
of his ascension: Vk Go ye, therefore, 
and teach all nations, baptizing them in 



METHOD AND AGENTS, 201 

the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost : teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have 
commanded you." There is no rival 
command to this. It is the bugle-note 
that summons Christian men to duty, 
and is the first faint, sweet note of the 
far-off and yet nearing victor's song. 

While you co-operate with him you 
will of necessity be compelled to join 
ranks with every one of his followers. 
Five years ago some of us had the 
privilege of visiting the General Confer- 
ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in New York City. The General As- 
sembly of the Presbyterian Church met 
at Philadelphia at the same time. The 
same week the General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian Church, South, met at Bal- 
timore, as did the General Baptist As- 
sociation at Washington. These four 
great denominations thus met on the 
seaboard, within easy distance of each 
other, and we visited them all. A five 
hours' ride would bring you over the 



201 THE NEW GENERATION. 

distance which separated them. This 
indicates the true relation of denomi- 
national Christian bodies to each other, 
and their duty to the age. They met 
in the East — therefore rising in power 
and splendor like the morning. They 
met by the sea, and therefore could 
take quick shipping to any part of the 
earth on their evangelizing mission. 
They were close together. 

Not only are the opportunities and 
resources at hand, and the commands 
issued, but the plans are already formed. 
Philanthropies are already organized, 
which, if they could accomplish their 
objects, would leave no hunger unsatis- 
fied, no suffering unrelieved, no age or 
childhood desolate. Hospitals, orphan- 
ages, dispensaries, and homes startle us 
by their multiplicity and variety. Or- 
ders of deaconesses, fraternal societies, 
and associated charities and industrial 
alliances, as well as Epworth League 
settlements, abound on every side. There 
are Sunday-schools everywhere ; so are 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 203 

the Bible Societies and Tract Societies. 
Colleges and universities have been pro- 
jected, and have made an honorable be- 
ginning in endowment sufficient in num- 
ber and equipment to bring to every 
American the advantages of an educa- 
tion in the liberal arts, and the most 
comprehensive professional training. 
Home and Foreign Missionary Societies 
have such perfected machinery, that, 
properly worked, they would secure a 
generous contribution from every mem- 
ber of the Christian Church — indeed, 
from every member of civilized society — 
and bring the gospel to every man on 
the globe in twenty years. Formerly, 
genius had to create its opportunities, 
and then employ them. Other gener- 
ations planned their campaigns, forged 
their weapons, and then fought with 
them afterwards. But this new gener- 
ation finds its opportunities already 
created, its campaigns planned, its 
weapons forged. 

It remains only to indicate the agents 



204 THE NEW GENERATION. 

and to point out the men who shall 
participate in these movements and ex- 
ecute these enterprises. It is easier to 
plan than to work the plans. All hu- 
man and divine movements gather 
about persons. Love for systems and 
devotion to ideas there may be in the 
generic whole, which we call society. 
But great actions are always incarnate 
in heroic men. The supreme question 
of the hour is for men who shall have 
the genius for accomplishing things. 
Civilization is in extremity for men, 
full rounded men, who shall execute 
these enterprises, round out these 
schemes to completion, and consum- 
mate the purposes of their existence. 
The machinery is organized, the plans 
devised and drawn upon the trestle- 
board. The generation of organization 
must be followed by one of performance. 
No record would be more honorable 
for the rising host of Christians than 
that they should pass into history as 
the great executive generation ; the gen- 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 205 

eration which accomplished the projects 
handed down to them by others ; the 
generation which brought things to pass. 
Let them come to their places in these 
great organized philanthropies with such 
helpful sympathy, and press these agen- 
cies so persistently and enthusiastically 
that they shall have glorious realization; 
let them enforce benevolent legislation 
already enacted ; let them hurry the 
wheels of every ameliorating enterprise, 
and crowd the ranks already deploying 
against the hosts of darkness ; let them 
stand firm, u and having done all, stand;" 
let the generation lay the accumulated 
stores of wealth and wisdom which their 
fathers bequeathed to them upon the 
altars of the Church, and, within the 
lifetime of men now living, end the 
struggle for the nominal supremacy of 
Christianity ; let them do these things, 
and their sons after them will build 
monuments to the noblest generation 
who ever were marshaled upon the 
earth. 



206 THE NEW GENERATION. 

Nothing is more natural than to ex- 
pect that the new generation shall be- 
come this great executive agency. Youth 
is no hindrance ; it is rather a help. It 
has often been remarked that many of 
the soldiers of the late Civil War, on 
either side, were mere boys. The regi- 
ments were full of young men far below 
the age of compulsory military service. 
A distinguished clergyman of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, now stationed 
in New York City, enlisted as a private 
at the age of fourteen years and seven 
months. A distinguished ex-governor 
of Ohio, who early enlisted as a drum- 
mer-boy, surrendered his drum and 
shouldered a musket when he was not 
yet sixteen years old. These young 
men in the regiments, with easily re- 
cruited physical powers and youthful 
nerve, would stand a long campaign, or 
fling themselves at a breastwork with 
an unflinching daring and ardor that no 
veteran of the " old guard " or of Wel- 
lington's " iron brigade " could surpass. 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 207 

Splendid courage, noble purpose, and 
great enthusiasm are the special endow- 
ment of youth. There is an elasticity 
of nature and a boundless confidence 
which age, taught in the hard school of 
experience, does not possess. These 
are successful elements wherever they 
are possessed. They alone explain the 
wonderful careers of Alexander, Pitt, 
Napoleon, Livingstone, Stanley, and 
their contemporaries in youthful fame. 
There seems, therefore, a propriety in 
Deity committing progress to the new 
generation. In the freshness of their 
youth they possess motives which older 
men lack. The fathers have won their 
laurels and have covered their breasts 
with decorations of honor. The new 
generation has its spurs yet to win. 

The Church is beginning to learn 
that if it fights its battles royally and 
wins them easily, it must employ the 
burning zeal and heroic energies of 
young people's organizations, like the 
splendid Epworth League of the Meth- 



208 THE NEW GENERATION. 

odist Episcopal Church. The world 
was saved by a young man. When 
Jesus was on the threshold of man- 
hood after the thought of men, he 
went out to Calvary and redeemed the 
world. Why may not this youngest or- 
ganization of the new generation, stand- 
ing on the threshold of dominion, take 
pattern of him, consecrate their young 
manhood and womanhood to him, and 
give to every man speedily the oppor- 
tunity of hearing of his name and his 
dying love ? These young people's or- 
ganizations ought to bring to the Church 
an element to be neither enlisted nor 
drafted elsewhere. Like the young sol- 
diers, they can be outdone in devotion 
and ardor by no saint nor aged veteran 
in the Church of God ; and their organ- 
ization at this focal time when providen- 
tial events are converging, points to 
them as the intended agents. 

But youth alone is not enough. It 
must be youth with the greatness of 
soul. Great as are the powers of young 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 20g 

men and women, without great souls 
they will be incapable of measuring any 
great object or event, or of accomplish- 
ing any great purpose. Plato and Hegel 
both grew eloquent over the subjective 
world — over the thought that nothing 
outside of man can be great or good un- 
less he have greatness and goodness 
within to respond to it and to interpret 
it. Paul says : " What man knoweth the 
things of a man save the spirit of a 
man which is in hitn?" A man can not 
understand the grandeur of Milton's 
poetry unless he have a grandeur of 
soul by which to measure it. A man 
can not hear music appreciatively un- 
less he have a musical fiber which re- 
sponds to harmony. 

" There is no music in the babble of the rill, 
Unless there be the harmon} 7 within." 

And so the youth of the world, this new 
generation, can not feel the deep weight 
of responsibility upon them unless they 
have deepness of nature ; nor can they 

14 



2 1 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

estimate these mountains of privilege 
unless they have great souls. With this 
possession of youth and soul-greatness, 
their songs will thrill the armies of 
the Lord, their testimonies will inspire 
saints, and their hours of devotion will 
send kings and millionares to establish 
closets of prayer. As the generation 
matures, it will rise to its great oppor- 
tunities. The faith that now embraces 
a promise for a community will then 
enlarge to claim the world, and the eye 
which now sees only a few miles will 
sweep eternity of space with its mighty 
vision. 

But it must be youth with goodness 
as well. Society has hitherto been un- 
able to appreciate the character of Christ 
in all its fullness and power and com- 
pleteness. Sin has so ensnared the feet 
and blinded the eyes that few have been 
able to appreciate him as " the fairest 
among ten thousand, and the one alto- 
gether lovely. " Goodness will aid you 
to appreciate goodness as " in a glass 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 2 1 1 

face answers to face." Habits of sin 
are easily formed ; one sin leaves a 
wound from which the life can never 
completely recover. 

" I walked through the woodland meadows 

Where sweet the thrushes sing, 
And I found on a bed of mosses 

A bird with a broken wing ; 
I healed its wound, and each morning 

It sang its old sweet strain ; 
But the bird with a broken pinion 

Never soared so high again. 

But the bird with a broken pinion 

Kept another from the snare, 
And the life which sin had stricken, 

Saved another from despair. 
Each loss has its compensation, 

There is healing for every pain ; 
But the bird with a broken pinion 

Never soars so high again." 

If this generation, with greatness of 
soul, can keep its record clean, and 
come forward with holiness and good- 
ness enough to appreciate adequately, 
truly, and deeply the great character 
and purity of Christ, the world will be 



2 1 2 THE NE W GENERA T10N. 

won to him, and he will change into 
his own image the men of all races. 
Men will not then be lacking to suffer 
for the gospel's sake in every land. And 
the new generation, like the knights of 
the White Cross, will be able to sing: 

" My good sword cleaves the spears of men, 
My strong lance thrusteth sure ; 
My strength is as the strength of ten, 
Because my heart is pure." 

With youth and greatness and good- 
ness of soul every single man becomes 
a host. A single soldier can save the 
battle when the line wavers. The march 
and movement of the many are always 
directed by a few great men. It is per- 
haps too much to expect that all shall 
come forward with the utmost devotion 
and equal consecration ; but it is not an 
unreasonable expectation that the Ep- 
worth League and kindred societies 
should furnish a hero for every crucial 
hour, a leader for every forlorn hope, 
and saintly spirits enough to bear 
through famine and fever the glad news 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 213 

of salvation to the pagan world that sits 
in the darkness and shadow of death on 
the shores of five great oceans. A Gaul 
chieftain once tasted in his own land 
some of the wine of Italy. He called 
his clan together, and, as they raised 
their beakers to their lips, the chieftain 
pledged them in a great oath never to 
rest until they should drink that same 
wine on the very hillsides where it was 
pressed. They knew that it meant long 
marches and stern battles, but they took 
the oath. Agreeable to their vow, they 
pushed over the mountain barriers to 
their south, and in barbarian hordes 
ravaged northern Italy. Some fell, but 
they fell with their faces toward the foe. 
They camped at length, their purpose 
accomplished, on the green hillsides of 
Latium. " Go disciple all nations,'' said 
Jesus, and pledged in the command his 
disciples to accomplish it. Christ him- 
self has pledged leadership in the great 
task long repeated to men, and set again 
before this new generation. Happy the 



2 1 4 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

multitude who can see in him an ade- 
quate leader and Savior, and obtain a 
place of honor in the march ! I believe 
Thor is ready, and will wield his ham- 
mer well. Let every member of the 
new generation dedicate himself to ac- 
complishing this new command. Let 
us all covet a place near the great Cap- 
tain, and aspire to become one of his 
trusted lieutenants. 

" Fight on, nr^ soul, till death 
Shall bring thee to thy God ; 
He '11 take thee at thy parting breath 
To his divine abode." 

"I go the way of all the earth; be 
thou strong, therefore, and show thyself 
a man." They are the words of a 
father to a son ; of a king to a prince ; 
of the representative of one generation 
to the leader of another. They were 
spoken by David to Solomon. David 
had been a shepherd lad, then a hunted 
fugitive, then the head of a tribe. He 
had risen, step by step, to kingship in 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 215 

Israel. He had bound together the 
twelve scattered tribes into one united 
and powerful people. Every rebellion 
had been crushed, every foreign invasion 
had been repelled. He had fought 
many long and bloody wars, enlarged 
his country's borders, enriched her treas- 
uries, strengthened the hands of her re- 
ligion, and had conquered for himself 
and his people an honorable peace. 
But now, grown old, full of honors, 
with treasuries overflowing, and projects 
for building a great temple to Jehovah 
in his mind, the sands of life ran out, 
and he had come to the end of all 
things earthly. Like Moses at the burn- 
ing bush, waiting for the command of 
God, Solomon, his son and successor, 
stood beside him to hear his last words 
of counsel. David's mind hurried back- 
ward, and his heart was full of the 
visions of his youth. He recalled the 
strength and courage and purpose of 
his shepherd days, and now, when 
Israel's glory was fading from beneath 



2l6 THE NEW GENERATION. 

his eye, he remembered the stepping- 
stones to greatness. How solemn and 
weighty was the charge to his son : 
"Be strong," "show thyself a man," 
and "keep the charge of the Lord thy 
God to walk in his ways !" Further 
than this, human counsels can not go, 
and beyond their keeping this sorrowing 
prince can not hope to pass. 

These words are the last counsels of 
the fathers to this new generation. 
The hands of a great generation have 
been laid upon their heads; the shadows 
are behind them, light and hope are 
beckoning onward, and the portals of a 
new century stand open before them. 
O generation of the Epworth League ! 
be strong and make full proof of your 
manhood. Your fathers subdued the 
wilderness ; they blazed their way 
through its pathless wilds, felled with 
sturdy blows the giants of the forest, 
founded there new States, and erected 
there, on sure foundations, the columns 
of liberty. Do you, in your day, lay 



METHOD AND AGENTS. 217 

axes to the giant growths of unright- 
eousness, and cut off the rank roots of 
intemperance and immorality. They 
turned over on the long prairie the first 
virgin sod, and sowed there harvests of 
waving grain. See to it that you over- 
turn the despotisms of selfish power 
and privilege, and sow in their places 
the fair growing harvests of the brother- 
hood of man. As David united the 
tribes, do you bind up and bring to- 
gether the great denominational organ- 
izations of Christianity. If you are 
members of the Epworth League, let it 
be your purpose to consolidate the great 
branches of American Methodism, and 
make the followers of Wesley harmoni- 
ous, united, and irresistible once more. 
American Presbyterianism should be 
one. American Methodism should be 
one. Do you see to it that the sins of 
the fathers are forgiven and forgotten 
in your day, and that Methodism be- 
comes once more the standard-bearer 
of the Christian Church and the right 



2 1 8 THE NE W GENERA TION. 

hand of religion. David planned a 
temple ; Solomon built it ; there, in the 
fullness of time, Messiah was made 
manifest to Israel. Your fathers built 
log school-houses and churches ; do you 
build them out of stone and unyielding 
iron, and let men find peace and hope 
under the Savior's outstretched arms 
within their walls. They built col- 
leges; do you endow larger ones. They 
founded great universities ; see to it that 
they are enlarged, and that their halls are 
crowded with reverent, faithful hearts. 
They harnessed steam and chained the 
lightning, made them subservient to 
the uses of man, and multiplied by 
many fold the productive power of hu- 
man labor ; do you put new power into 
the Christian Church, the engine-room 
of the Almighty, and harness the invis- 
ible Spirit of God to the world's re- 
demption. 

THE END. 






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